


Hummingbird Heartbeats

by mumuinc



Series: Hummingbird Heartbeats [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, sex (lots of it), some graphic scenes of violence in a dream sequence (skip ch8 if you don't want to see it)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-08 11:20:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 17
Words: 48,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11645511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumuinc/pseuds/mumuinc
Summary: Five years after taking Neil and Kevin from Castle Evermore, Mary Hatford is dead. Neil and Kevin are just trying to survive as life moves on in California.





	1. Chapter 1

His name today was Alex Johnson and he was waiting in the terminal for his older brother to pick him up.

 

The scenario was familiar enough for Alex to keep the tremor out of his pale, spindly fingers anxiously fidgeting on the fraying strap of his duffle bag. San Francisco was a sprawling megalopolis and the interstate bus terminal, while not as busy as the airport, was crowded enough to easily lose oneself in the throng of milling travelers that he didn’t worry about getting spotted or recognized. The last they’d seen of his father was two state lines away, and then his father had been carted off in handcuffs.

 

He exhaled shakily. He was safe. He had to repeat it to himself mentally a few times over before his body would believe him long enough to stop himself from hyperventilating as he cast about frantically for his brother.

 

Outwardly, he knew he looked like a normal teenager lost in the terminal. When he’d passed a glass door earlier, he’d checked his reflection just long enough to ascertain his roots were not showing. His hair was a mess: cut crookedly in the dingy light of a cheap, by-the-hour motel room by his older brother, with hands that were too shaky for even layers, and the hair strands fried from too much hair dye, but neither he nor his brother could risk having his roots peeking, especially not now that their mother was gone.

 

He passed a hand over his face, again casting about worriedly for a glimpse of his brother, and then darting to ascertain that none of the exits he’d tracked when they first walked into the terminal was blocked. Scott said he would be gone only ten minutes. It’d been half an hour since Alex sat alone and his fingers were starting to itch with his anxiety.

 

He shifted when a stranger sat a little too close to him for comfort. It was a large man, probably in his late teens or early twenties, with a crew cut, white t-shirt and fatigue pants. Alex glimpsed black brands on his tan, muscled arms.  _ Military _ , Alex thought, clutching his duffle’s strap tighter to his chest and bringing the bag into his lap. Marines, if he recognized the tattoos correctly.

 

The stranger was looking around casually, like he was looking for someone. Alex hunkered in on himself, trying to make himself invisible.

 

The stranger turned to him and smiled. “Busy day here today, huh?”

 

His eyes darted to see who the stranger was talking to but the man was looking at him. Alex could feel his pulse rabbit to a frantic beat. He kept his eyes down.

 

The stranger kept talking. “I just got back from deployment, see. My mom and my brother should’ve been here to pick me up an hour ago.” When Alex continued to say nothing, the stranger’s smile widened. “You’re kinda young to be out here alone.”

 

He hunched some more and shifted the duffle in his lap protectively. He wanted to bolt for one of the exits but Scott had very clearly told him to keep to their meeting spot.

 

“My brother is in line to buy tickets,” he said softly when the man kept looking at him. 

 

“Cool,” said the stranger. “Any nice place you’re headed for the weekend?”

 

Alex shrugged, trying his best to appear like another bored teenager, one among the sea of hundreds of other teenage boys in the terminal, milling around with their families. “My brother wants to go to Vegas.”

 

“Nice.” The stranger looked about to say something else when his eyes lit up and he waved excitedly at someone over Alex’s shoulder.

 

“Drake!”

 

He half-turned at the sound of a woman’s voice.

 

A small woman with mousy brown hair and an equally small teenage boy around Alex’s age, with pale blond hair, waded through the sea of people, waving enthusiastically at the tall stranger beside Alex, who grinned at him.

 

“Well, looks like my ride is here. And sweet, mom managed to wrangle Andrew along.”

 

Alex didn’t think there was anything “sweet” about the sour, clearly unhappy expression on the blond boy’s face as he crossed his arms over his chest, as he and his mother came to a stop three feet from where Alex and the stranger, who was evidently called Drake, sat. The boy looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but this crowded terminal with his mousy-haired mother, to pick up his older brother. Alex thought it strange that the boy wore a long-sleeved turtleneck in the sweltering San Francisco late spring. He thought it even stranger that the boy, pale and blond, with pale hazel eyes, looked nothing like the tall tanned dark haired Drake or his small, dark-haired mother.

 

He watched silently as Drake stood up and enveloped his mother in a bear hug and then ruffled the tousled blond mess that was his brother’s hair affectionately. The brother looked unimpressed, and though he didn’t move, Alex got the vague impression that he was restraining himself from flinching away.

 

Drake turned back to smile at him. “Well kid, my mom’s here so I guess I’ll be seeing you.”

 

Alex stared. He didn’t nod or smile back, but Drake had already turned back to chat excitedly with his mother. It reminded Alex with a pang so visceral it almost made him choke of his own mother, dead not five days ago, on a lonely deserted beach in southern California. He averted his eyes, uncomfortable and feeling that creeping sense of dread he’d always felt since she died. His hands itched for a cigarette. He wanted Scott. Scott still hadn’t come back.

 

He was so lost in his own thoughts he didn’t realize Drake’s brother hadn’t moved from where he stood in front of him.

 

“Hey.” His voice was flat as he nudged Alex’s battered sneakers with a booted foot. Alex startled out of his grief, eyes flying up to look at the blond boy. The boy nodded his head in the direction of the ticket counters. “I think someone’s looking for you.”

 

He cast about, looking in the direction the boy had indicated, and saw Scott’s familiar angular face, scanning the crowd crossly for him, his battered Exy racquet, a remnant from a life they had left behind, slung over his shoulder carelessly. Scott was easy to find in a crowd, with his tall stature, his winsome looks, and the perpetual bandage over his left cheekbone. It was red gingham printed today and before they’d left the park where they’d spent the night sleeping under a slide in a playground, Alex had argued heatedly that it drew too much attention to Scott, which in turn drew too much attention to Alex, and that was the kind of thing that got people like them killed.

 

Alex could heel his cheeks heating up when he realized the blond boy was still staring at him. At a certain angle and when the light hit his pale hazel eyes right, it almost looked like his eyes were liquid gold.

 

“It’s my brother,” he said, standing and shuffling his bag closer to his body. “He’s going to buy us bus tickets to get to Vegas.”

 

The blond boy, Andrew, Drake had referred to him, flicked his eyes between Alex and Scott. “You don’t look like brothers.”

 

Alex resisted rolling his eyes. “Well we are. And I guess I better get going.”

 

Andrew nodded, fishing out a cigarette pack from the back pocket of his pants and putting a stick to his mouth, but refraining from lighting up. He stepped aside to let Alex pass and then turned on his heel purposefully to follow Alex to where Scott stood near the exit closest to the ticket booths. Scott looked cross and impatient when he spotted Alex, but Alex’s attention was riveted to the boy dogging his steps.

 

He stopped walking abruptly and turned. Andrew nearly ran into him.

 

“Why are you following me?”

 

Andrew rolled his eyes and looked bored. “I’m going out to smoke. The exit’s where you’re going and I’m headed there too.”

 

Alex narrowed his eyes. “Why aren’t you following your mother and your brother, then? They were headed to a different exit.”

 

Andrew shrugged uncaringly. “They’ll find me later and bring me back. They always do.” When Scott was almost in earshot, he smirked at Alex and gave him a mocking two-finger salute. “See you around, kid.”

 

Alex frowned to argue that they were probably the same age, or maybe Alex was even older but Andrew had already melted into the crowd, and Scott was striding over purposefully to where Alex stood.

 

“Where were you? I’ve been looking everywhere!”

 

Alex scowled. “Not everywhere,” he muttered sourly. “I’ve been sitting exactly where we agreed to meet.”

 

Scott glowered at him. He was over half a foot taller than Alex and the disparity of their height was something he loved using to try to bully Alex while they were growing up. Alex only glared back, unimpressed.

 

“Mel’s getting our shit ready in a few days, but we have to pick it up from her house in Oakland. For ‘privacy’, she says, as if anything is ever private in California these days.”

 

Alex nodded. Oakland was just outside San Francisco anyway. It should be easy enough for the two of them to take a bus there, and even though Scott pissed him off immensely on his best days, he was thankful for the older boy’s presence, now more so than before, that their mother, well Alex’s mother, was gone.

 

“Did you get us tickets?”

 

“No. We can catch a ride to Nevada in Oakland so we don’t have to come back here. The people here give me the skeevies. They’re all too… pleasant.”

 

Alex remembered Drake the stranger, smiling at him and making his skin crawl with the attention. Yes, he’d be happy to leave sunny, happy San Francisco the soonest they could.

 

“Do you think we could get a room tonight before we head over to Oakland?” Scott asked as Alex steered them both out the terminal and into the San Francisco sunshine. “I think I got sand in my pants sleeping in too many playgrounds.”

 

Alex snorted. “We slept in one playground, Scott. One. And you were the one with the sleeping mat. I’m the one with sand in my hair, but you don’t hear me whining about that, do you?”

 

“Fuck off,” Scott muttered with no heat in his voice. “I just… we need some place to rest and talk in private anyway and we can’t really break into cars here to sleep. Too many street cams.”

 

Scott was right, of course. The two of them hadn’t slept in a real bed since that awful night on the beach when Alex’s mother died, and he had been too distraught to argue when Scott steered him into the dingy roadside motel on that lonely stretch of California desert road. Alex had been inconsolable that night, his world a gray numbness and the only color was the orange and red of the fire he’d set to burn the car and his mother’s body, licking at the edges of his vision. Scott had to hold him up all night from his delirious crying, and though Alex would never say it, he was grateful that Scott had enough presence of mind to find him a private place to have a breakdown.

 

That was five days ago. They’d hitched rides from truckers to get to San Francisco, taking turns to watch each other’s back as they slept in truck beds, Alex with the gun in his duffle and Scott with his heavy Exy racquet, just as they had for the past five years that they had been on the road together with Alex’s mom. When they arrived in San Francisco, they slept in parks and showered by breaking into locker rooms of local community centers before they opened.

 

Alex didn’t really care what they did. He’d stopped caring at the spark of his lighter catching on the exhaust of the beat-up Mitsubishi his mother had died in. The days for him were just passing time and looking over his shoulder in case his father’s men were on their trail.

 

But Scott… Scott was alive, or as alive as one could be after spending a third of his life on the run from people who knew how to lead them to a fate worse than death. Alex didn’t want to be selfish, especially when his mother’s last words had been for the two boys to keep running. Together.

 

He sighed as he raked his hand through his tangled hair, catching on impossible snarls in his curls. 

 

“Fine. One night,” he conceded, scowling when Scott’s expression turned smug. “You gotta find us something that won’t ask too many questions.”

 

Scott waved off his concerns with a careless hand as he twirled his racquet with his other hand. “Who even is gonna ask questions? I’m a legal adult, and I’m your brother.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

It turned out that tons of people wanted to ask questions of two teenage boys wanting a motel room on a weekend. The first place they’d gone to wouldn’t believe that the two of them weren’t runaways and Scott had to back off before the motel night attendant called the police or Child Protective Services. The second place wanted both their IDs and Alex didn’t want to give up his, paranoid that it would be the first thing his father’s men would ask the motel management for if they had even an inkling that the two of them were in California.

 

By the third motel they’d walked into, even Scott was beginning to warm to the idea of sleeping on a park bench. But this time, the motel attendant took one look at Scott’s handsome, winsome face, and then at Alex’s pretty, young features, smirked and passed them the key with no further questions, other than a throwaway reminder that condoms were available in the same vending machine that dispensed the candy bars. 

 

Alex had to pinch Scott’s wrist to keep him from arguing with the motel attendant. It didn’t matter to him that acne-riddled motel attendants thought he and Scott were shacking up for the weekend as long as he could finally get a proper shower, and get to sleep in a bed where the most he had to worry about was questionable stains on the bedding, and not worms crawling up his hair or stray cats sniffing at his crotch. The worst had been their first night in San Francisco, when a middle-aged man propositioned Scott. The two of them had to find a spot close to where the other homeless slept to take advantage of numbers to be protected from perverts.

 

They trudged to the third floor, bone-weary and stinking of the California heat and dust. Scott collapsed into the chair shoved in the corner of the room next to the door, too tired to even make it into the queen bed in the middle of the room. He tossed his backpack to the bed and gestured to Alex, with a lazy wave of his hand.

 

“Papers are inside.”

 

Alex rummaged in the beat-up bag and found the brown envelope folded in half tucked between two different sports magazines with prominent features on Exy and its famous son, Riko Moriyama. Alex fished them all out, tiredness forgotten at the sight of the magazines.

 

“Where did you get this?” he asked, turning the cover of one to look for the feature on Moriyama.

 

Scott heaved himself off the chair and sat next to Alex. “Swiped from one of the community centers. They had a whole bunch. I figured they wouldn’t miss it if we ‘borrowed’ some.” He grinned as Alex scanned the pages quickly. “Don’t crumple them. We can go through later.”

 

He nodded and set them aside obediently before reaching for the envelope and scanning its contents, his face falling when he looked over Scott’s details.

 

“‘Kevin’? You know you can’t use that name! Your face is too recognizable!” He flipped through the pages. “And what’s this? A transcript? You know we can’t go to school, Scott! We can’t stay in one place too long.”

 

Scott sighed tiredly. “I’m tired of running, Nathaniel. I’ve only got one year of high school left and I just want to finish it.”

 

Alex scowled darkly. “Don’t call me that name. You know I hate it.”

 

“But it’s your name!” Scott sighed again. “Look, it’s going to be summer break anyway. We have two months to decide if we really want to stay some place long enough to go to school, alright?”

 

Alex pressed his lips in a tight line, trying to get a reign on his temper. He could understand Scott on some level. It was tiring to run, so very exhausting to change names, assume new identities, hide out in one place only to hope to another the moment they started getting comfortable and growing roots. He knew that because he was tired too. Some days, he woke up not knowing who he was, what his name was for the day, the week, the month. Most days, he didn’t feel real enough to do anything  _ but _ run.

 

He started when he felt Scott’s hand grabbing his face, tilting his chin and forcing him to meet the falseness of the muddy brown contact lenses he and Scott had worn the day Mary Hatford stole them both away from Castle Evermore, forever ruining both boys’ futures. Scott, in particular, was being groomed into the prince of the next generation of Exy stars, with his adoptive brother, Riko Moriyama. He was the child of one of the creators of the sport, Kayleigh Day, and the adopted child of the other one of its founders, Tetsuji Moriyama. Alex and his mother had stolen that future from him.

 

“Alex. Alex. Look at me. Breathe, Alex, breathe.”

 

Scott’s voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a very long tunnel and try as he might, Alex couldn’t reach him. He tried to follow Scott’s instruction and forced himself to suck in a breath. He hadn’t even realized he’d stopped breathing until Scott grabbed him. He choked on his breath and started hyperventilating.

 

His fault. Scott having no future. The twenty-two names over as many cities across three continents. 

 

“Breathe, Alex.” Scott grabbed his shoulders and slapped both his cheeks lightly. “Alex!”

 

His fault. His mother beaten half to death by his father in that bloody encounter in Seattle. His mother’s cooling body, plastered and stuck into the overheated vinyl dashboard and seats of the old Mitsubishi. It was all his fault.

 

“Alex!” Scott yelled and punctuated his hoarse call with a sharp slap to Alex’s left cheek.

 

Alex choked another deep breath and pushed Scott away. “I--I need to--”

 

He didn’t finish what he’d been about to say and shoved Scott away from him and bolted out of the room, running down the stairs. By the time he hit the pavement, he’d already broken into a full speed run.

 

He could never outrun his thoughts, but for the next two hours as he ran through the quiet but dazzlingly lit streets of San Francisco, his mind was mercifully blank.

 

* * *

 

Scott sat on the dimly lit corridor of the motel reading a history book he had swiped once when the two of them had been hanging out at a local library when they had stayed with Alex’s relatives in England. It was too dark to really be reading but Scott had his cheap wire frames perched on his straight, sharp nose, and he glanced up occasionally in the direction of the motel compound gate, nibbled on his thumbnail absently, before turning the page in his tattered book.

 

When Alex’s shadow fell across the page he was reading, Scott dog-eared the page, tossed the book aside and stood and folded his arms around Alex tightly, crushing him against his chest.

 

“Stop doing this to me,” he whispered against the sweat- and rain-damp curls in Alex’s nape.

 

Alex stiffened at the hug before awkwardly returning the embrace. Even after living for five years with Scott’s easy, tactile show of affection, he found it difficult to accept his friend’s easy touches. He wasn’t sure if it was because his mother had never been openly affectionate with him, even when he was younger, before they ran, when he had still been Nathaniel. Mary Hatford had been all about the cold business of survival, touching her son only when he needed to be patched up from the knives or blows he received from his father. And then when they were on the run, it had been a stiff hand on the wrists of each of her boys, steeling them for when she wanted them to run, or the relentless motion of her gun-calloused fingers when she stitched them up after violent run-ins with his father’s men. Scott had been the only person who ever touched Alex with anything resembling closeness, affection. Sometimes, it baffled him so much that Scott could be capable of such easy touches, but then Alex remembered that in his previous life, before Alex, before Tetsuji Moriyama, Scott had had a mother, a parent, who loved him.

 

He jerked out of the embrace awkwardly and groped for the door, avoiding Scott’s concerned stare, as he let them both into the room, before closing and locking the door behind him.

 

“I should go take a shower,” he muttered, running an awkward hand through his sweaty curls as he started for the bathroom, noticing that there were already folded clothes on the bed waiting. 

 

Scott hovered by the room’s main door, looking at once concerned and anxious. Alex exhaled and steeled himself for his decision.

 

“I guess I should get used to calling you Kevin again, shouldn’t I?”

 

Scott grinned and the triumph shining in his eyes, his real eyes, glittering green and flashing flecks of blue in the glint of his wireframes, spoke volumes that Alex wasn’t sure he was ready to acknowledge.

  
  


Scott,  _ or Kevin _ , Alex corrected himself with a reminder that he also needed to remember that his new documents said his name was Neil Josten, was already in bed, drowsily browsing through one of the magazines when Alex ( _ Neil _ , he reminded himself with exasperation. He should be used to these name and personality changes by now) stepped out of the shower. He was thankful that he let Kevin convince him to get a room with running hot water, instead of spending another night on a park bench and brushing his teeth at a water fountain. He looked at Kevin for a moment to make sure the other boy was fully engrossed in his magazine before walking to the bed to put on his clothes.

 

Their encounter with Nathan Wesninski, Neil’s father, and his men in Seattle hadn’t spared Neil from injury. Mary had taken the brunt of the attack from Nathan but Neil hadn’t been fast enough to dodge the shallow knife wound Lola had inflicted on his chest. Kevin had stitched him up in the car while Mary drove, delirious from her injuries. 

 

The relative quiet that their lives had taken after Mary passed had been kind to Neil, but the wound still stung and looked red and raw. It had been a few days since, and Kevin had helped him clean and change the bandages whenever they could find clean dressing.

 

Kevin cocked an eyebrow in his direction as Neil hurriedly patted down the sweatshirt Kevin had left out for him. “We’ll have to take those stitches out soon.”

 

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly, as he climbed into the space Kevin had left out for him. 

 

The bed wasn’t large but it was bigger than most of the beds Neil and his mother usually shared when they ran. Mary liked to keep track of both her wards so she always picked rooms with twin beds, one in which Neil slept at her back, his hand resting under his pillow next to his gun, Kevin on the bed across, hand wrapped on his racquet that served both a reminder of his obsession, and as a weapon.

 

He was relieved when Kevin pulled closer, easing his anxiety over not having anyone at his back to watch over him while he slept. 

 

“Here,” Kevin said quietly, shifting the magazine he’d propped up on his chest so that one end sat on his chest and the other propped on Neil’s arm. Neil grabbed the other end of the magazine so it wouldn’t flop back. Kevin turned the page through to the Exy feature, an interview with Riko Moriyama on his prospects for joining the Edgar Allan Ravens, and his dreams of joining the US Court.

 

Neil tracked the words on the page before letting the magazine go to gently touch Kevin’s left cheekbone. Kevin turned to face him. He’d taken out the obnoxious red gingham printed Band-Aid to reveal the number 2 tattooed on his left cheek. Neil knew Kevin had only been twelve when he and Riko had convinced Tetsuji to hire a tattoo artist to permanently ink the numbers they had been drawing on each other’s faces since they were children. 

 

Neil could not remember a time when Kevin had not had that number printed on his face. It had been drawn in with a Sharpie the first time they’d met when Neil was eight. When he and Mary came back to steal Kevin away into the West Virginia night when he was ten, Kevin’s number was already permanent, a brand that made a face as globally recognizable as his that much more difficult to hide.

 

Neil touched the number delicately, watching the complicated expression on Kevin’s face. “Do you regret it? Coming with us?”

 

Kevin exhaled quietly, closing his eyes and swallowing before looking down at Neil’s searching face. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to know the answer, but Kevin had been in his life for the past five years, part of survival, of the desperate need to run from his fate. He couldn’t fathom why his mother would so cruelly take Kevin’s future and life away from him only to thrust him into this crazy half-existence they had been living.

 

“Sometimes,” he whispered, his hand letting go of the magazine altogether to catch Neil’s fingers into his larger palm. “I don’t know if I could ever forgive you and her for barging into my life like that.” 

 

He looked at Neil’s fingers, cradled in his hand like it held the answer for why Mary Hatford and Nathaniel Wesninski had shown up one summer night and turned his life upside down.

 

“Sometimes, I dream about just leaving you. Find my way back to West Virginia, and beg for the Master to take me back.”

 

Neil averted his eyes, unwilling to see the truth in Kevin’s face. He knew if Kevin left now that his mother was gone, he would never be able to carry on with the grief of her death tearing him apart, and the guilt of the part he played in Kevin’s downfall shredding whatever was left of his soul.

 

Kevin let go of his hand, climbed out of the bed, shutting off all the lights save for the mellow glow of the lamp beside the bed. Neil watched him move around the room to bend over the backpack he’d moved to the floor, and fished something out, and for a brief irrational moment, he wondered if Kevin had taken his gun to kill him in his sleep. He wasn’t sure if that was worse than the thought of Kevin just picking up his things and leaving him to go back to Castle Evermore, to Riko and Tetsuji, and his bright future with the Ravens.

 

“Don’t go,” he begged quietly, his eyes on Kevin’s back, his throat closing over the hollow apology on the tip of his tongue, five years too late.

 

Kevin straightened and walked to the chair next to the door. In his hand was the bottle of vodka Neil had shoplifted from one of the convenience stores at the terminal, when Kevin had gone to see Mary’s contact at the ticket booths. He turned the chair so it was facing the bed, facing Neil, sank down and took a long pull of the foul liquid, his face still with that complicated expression he always wore whenever they talked about that night from five years ago.

 

“Go to sleep, Neil.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, while it seems like I have no chill, I actually finished writing this story months ago. Also a few words of warning:
> 
> 1\. Kevin/Neil is my kink. Sry, no Andreil to see here (ever).  
> 2\. If it seems like Kevin doesn't know two shits about being on the run despite running with Neil and his mom for five years, that's because he doesn't. Mary never treated Kevin the same way. More on that in succeeding chapters.  
> 3\. I do not know how to write - my stories are a collection of scenes that I try to string together to make a story, so if it seems like it's going nowhere... er, that's because it is?  
> 4\. Yep, Alcoholic!Kevin is still a thing.  
> 5\. I know literally two shits about California and the US in general, so references to places, how public school and law enforcement work, are all just based on quick Wikipedia research and TV.  
> 6\. I like printed Band-Aids.  
> 7\. Yes, I have seen vending machines that sell condoms with candy bars. Idk if the same exists in the US, but it does where I'm from (in sleazy motels, what? I've been to a few places for 'research'.)


	3. Chapter 3

Kevin was so badly hung over the next day that they weren’t able to check out of the motel until late afternoon. The daytime motel attendant was a middle-aged lady with impossibly freckled skin stretched over her gaunt face and she looked them over strangely when Kevin, his eyes bloodshot, face unkempt with his five o’clock shadow, returned the keys and paid for the room. They’d had to settle a late check-out fee and pay for damages to the room’s carpeting because when Kevin awoke around noon, he hadn’t made it to the bathroom fast enough before he lost the previous day’s meal and forty percent of the alcohol he’d imbibed to the motel room floor. He’d needed to stay wrapped around the toilet bowl at the ready to puke for another two hours before he was steady enough to shower and wolf down the convenience store sandwiches Neil had bought for him for breakfast.

 

The bus ride from San Francisco to Oakland was mercifully short. Neil was afraid Kevin would throw up again with the lurching motions of the moving vehicle. Kevin still looked a little green by the time they got off the bus a few blocks from where their contact had told Kevin to go.

 

The main road was lined with the trappings of suburbia: cookie cutter houses painted in soft pastels or ivory, framed by gray or terracotta shingles. The lawns were manicured and decorated with shrubs and flowering plants. Here and there, Neil could see the discarded toys of young children. There was a rainbow colored inflatable children’s pool on the last house at the end of the block. 

 

Kevin walked up to the door of this one, sending Neil an odd look. So far, since they’d been on the run, Mary’s contacts had been respectable looking people, but never so ridiculously domestic and all American as this one.

 

Neil clutched his duffel’s strap, absently worrying the frays. Kevin’s consternated look had him darting looks at the pretty rose bushes lining the edge of the lawn that led to the garage door. The strange normalcy unnerved him.

 

The door swung open at Kevin’s third knock. A middle-aged woman with a harried expression, and carrying a toddler that sucked on a ratty-looking pink pacifier, answered the door. At the sight of Kevin’s face, she broke into an exasperated smile.

 

“Well, hello, young man.”

 

Neil blinked at Kevin, who shrugged back at him.

 

“Ma’am, we’re looking for Melissa,” Kevin replied politely. “She said she had some papers for us to work on.”

 

“Oh!” the woman exclaimed, shifting the child in her arms to have her cling around her left hip as she pulled the door wider. “That girl… always getting strangers to do her work for her.” She chuckled and shook her head and gestured with her free hand to show the boys in. “Well, come in. Would you boys like some tea? Mel’s upstairs and I’ll get one of my girls to get her, but she’s always primping so much when she has visitors, especially when it’s strapping young men like you.”

 

Neil wrinkled his nose as the woman leered at Kevin, who somehow managed to look at once abashed and annoyed that a woman with a toddler hanging in her arms was trying to flirt with him.

 

The interior of the house was even more domestic: there were children’s toys scattered everywhere, dolls with ratty plastic hair, stuffed animals with button eyes and chewed off ears, plastic blocks that the two boys had to be careful not to step on lest they get wedged into the gaps of their shoes. Neil tightened his grip on his duffel strap as the woman showed them to a sitting area where three teenage girls of varying ages and looking like younger clones of the middle-aged woman were sitting on the floor, gathered around the low coffee table. Textbooks and open notebooks were spread all across, punctuated by tall half-empty glasses of juice or lemonade, dripping condensation in large ringed puddles around the glasses. The girls looked at them once and paid them no further attention, for which Neil was thankful.

 

“Sandy, would you be a dear and get your sister? She has visitors again.”

 

The oldest of the girls rolled her eyes but obediently got up and made for the stairs at the hall opposite the door through which they entered. The two other girls cleared off their homework so their mother could lay out two new glasses of what looked like sweet tea in front of Kevin and Neil, who remained standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. One of the girls looked up at Kevin as he shuffled his racquet from one hand to another. Kevin’s racquet, along with his polite smile, was always the first thing people noticed.

 

“You’re too tall for that,” the girl said, blinking large baby blue eyes up at the two of them.

 

Kevin shrugged, unperturbed. It was a common observation most people who met them had. The racquet had been one of the few things he had managed to get away with when Neil and his mother took him from Evermore. He’d been thirteen then and his growth spurt in the five years he’d been with Neil had been tremendous. The racquet looked ridiculously undersized for his tall, wiry frame.

 

“We couldn’t afford a new one,” he replied.

 

The woman with the baby shushed her daughter. “Zelda, you know it’s rude to point out when people are poor!”

 

Neil was almost amused by the ridiculous admonishment. He knew that the only reason Kevin even kept that stupid racquet was because Mary allowed him to. Neither of them were allowed to play Exy during their time on the run, and Mary had only allowed Kevin to keep the racquet if the two of them stayed away from actually playing Exy. Mary hadn’t been wholly successful in controlling Kevin’s need to play, though. In their first year running, Kevin hadn’t been allowed anywhere near an Exy court and he had sunk into a depression so deep, Mary could barely get him to move when it mattered. Consequently, he’d been allowed to play once he’d agreed to hide his number and allowed Mary to do what she could to change his looks. Neil had never been allowed to play with him, though. Whenever and wherever Kevin was allowed to play, Neil had always been kept away, under the iron grip of his mother’s paranoia, and the intense envy he had over his mother’s permissiveness with Kevin constantly ate at his head. If Mary hadn’t died and left the two of them together, Neil knew he would have eventually been consumed by his jealousy: even when they ran, Kevin had the better life, the one with a semblance of normalcy. Kevin had been the one allowed to go to school; he’d been allowed to talk to people, to make friends. Neil had been the child kept in their hideouts like a dirty secret.

 

Kevin and the two girls were looking at him expectantly and Neil realized he’d spaced out and they had been trying to talk to him.

 

“I asked if you played too,” the girl said patiently.

 

Neil shook his head and stuttered. “N-no.” He wasn’t sure what his expression was like, if his face betrayed his jealousy but he didn’t want Kevin to know.

 

He was saved from having to elaborate at the girl’s questioning look when Melissa finally appeared at the stairs. She was another carbon copy of the three girls, the toddler, and the woman, though she looked much older than the teenagers, and her eyes fixed immediately to Kevin, the smile on her lips not quite reaching her eyes when she spotted Neil, pale and tiny and trying to disappear behind the taller boy.

 

“You brought a friend,” she said, and then proceeded to shoo the sisters and the woman with the baby out of the sitting room.

 

“Actually, he’s Mary’s child,” Kevin said, finally relaxing at the sight of their contact enough to sit on one of the overstuffed shabby chic couches. Neil followed suit, wedging himself between Kevin and the arm of the couch.

 

“Huh,” Melissa said, giving Neil an evaluating stare even as he shrank further into the couch. “I guess I could see it now that you don’t have your father’s hair and eyes.”

 

Neil hunched his shoulders, trying to make himself as small as possible even as he glared at Melissa. It wasn’t that hard since he was pressed next to Kevin from shoulder to hip and Kevin was tall, imposing, and sat ramrod straight. “Do you have our papers or not?”

 

“Sure,” she replied, but she was looking at Kevin. “I prepared the full set of transcripts, like you asked. Since you’re eighteen, you shouldn’t have a problem talking to schools and getting you and the runt--” Neil glowered at her, Kevin merely chuckled, “--enrolled. If you’re sticking around in Oakland, I found a few places for you to rent that won’t ask too many questions as long as you stick to your story.” She tossed a manila folder to the table. Kevin picked it up and handed it to Neil. “It’s all there. I suggest you find yourself a car, too. Places here that don’t ask questions have questionable security and you’re going to want to avoid being caught out late at night.”

 

Neil checked the packet. There were driver’s licenses and other IDs along with nondescript passports for Kevin and Neil Josten, eighteen and fifteen years old respectively, brothers, California locals from Marin county. The packet had papers listing them has having parents working overseas, and documents showing Kevin as Neil’s legal guardian. 

 

Melissa nodded at Kevin’s Exy racquet that he’d left leaning against the wall. “There are a few schools around here with pretty good teams, players who make it to Edgar Allan and USC. You might consider those. Stuart told me about you, a couple years back, when I visited England. But if you want to play, make sure that number on your face never sees the light of day.”

 

Kevin frowned and touched the Band-Aid on his face. It was blue plaid printed today. “I don’t--”

 

Melissa waved away his protest. “I’m not telling you to get rid of it permanently, but you’re going to have to invest in some good waterproof makeup if you want to play varsity and keep that number. You’re too recognizable with that, and God knows, you turn enough heads with it covered up.” She glanced meaningfully to the hall, where the woman, who Neil presumed was probably Melissa’s mother, was hovering at the doorway, smiling at Kevin.

 

_ Gross _ , he thought, turning away and snapping the folder shut to tuck into his duffel. He looked back at Melissa as he pulled out the envelope that contained her payment. “Thanks.”

 

Melissa nodded and the envelope of money disappeared into the folds of her blazer jacket. “Now, will you be telling your uncle about his sister, or did you want me to pass the message?”

 

Neil’s breath caught in his throat as he nodded. He didn’t want anything to do with the kind of business both his parents’ families ran, even though he knew Stuart could help keep both him and Kevin safe from his father.

 

“Please,” he said, voice so hoarse, Kevin leaned against him as if the closeness would be enough to give him strength to talk about his mother. “I’d be grateful if you could.”

 

Melissa’s lips pressed into a straight line as she nodded gravely. “Of course. Mary will be sorely missed.” She stood finally and the two of them followed. “If you’re staying in the Bay Area, Linda should be around here enough for you to reach her if you’re in a tight spot, and Zelda, Sandy and Elsa all go to public schools around the area. Our numbers are listed in your packet if you ever need anything further.”

 

“Thank you,” Kevin said, shaking Melissa’s proffered hand even has he steered Neil towards the door. Linda and the three girls stood by the stairs to let them pass. Sandy, the oldest girl, caught Neil’s hand as he passed by.

 

“Bye, Nathaniel,” she said, smiling impishly as she touched his fingers lightly. He couldn’t remember he had ever met her or her sisters before but she seemed so familiar with him that he glanced back at Melissa askance.

 

“You might not remember us much because your childhood was all a haze of pain, but Linda, Sandy and I were in Baltimore once, a few years before you left.” She smiled kindly at him. “The two of you played Exy with your little league team just before we left.”

 

Neil tried to wrack his mind for any instance when he may have met them there in his childhood, but remembering his mother’s death had scraped him raw and empty and he couldn’t focus long enough to bring up any memories. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

 

“It’s okay,” Sandy said. “You should play again though. You were really good.”

 

Neil nodded because he’d run out of words and let Kevin steer him out of the house. He couldn’t even bring himself to feel disgust at Linda’s overly cheerful farewell to Kevin.

 

Once the door was closed and they were off the manicured lawn, Kevin turned to him looking almost amused. “‘You were really good,’ huh?”

 

Neil sighed. “I don’t remember her at all.”

 

Kevin snorted. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”

 

“Fuck off,” he muttered, not meaning it at all. “I was five.”

 

“Hah! Did you kiss her?”

 

Neil pushed him away, scowling. “You know I don’t swing.”

 

“So you say,” Kevin said, sounding far too amused as he slung an arm around Neil and the two of them walked in silence back to the bus stop.

 

It wasn’t until hours later, when the two of them were back in another by-the-hour motel room, the night silent save for the sound of Kevin’s soft snores, that Neil realized how the other boy had so easily drawn him out of his head to prevent the panic attack that had been looming since Melissa brought up his mother’s death. He shifted on his side so he was facing the back of Kevin’s head and burrowed against his warmth.

 

“Thanks,” he whispered, and closed his eyes, and let Kevin’s snores lull him into a dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all just pointless backstory and filler so that I could write Kevin ribbing Neil about girls. I also imagine that eighteen-year-old Kevin must be the kind of good-looking kid that causes like panties to drop everywhere he goes. Yes, even of middle-aged women.


	4. Chapter 4

The weeks that passed were kind to them as they stayed in San Francisco to decide how to move forward. Neil spent the days running while he left Kevin at community centers to play Exy. He still couldn’t bring himself to pick up a racquet to join his friend. His mother’s stern admonishment that the sport would bring him to ruin was too fresh in his mind, even though his body itched for the adrenaline of the game. Kevin tried to cajole him into playing every day but the memory of his mother’s voice and the slap of her palm connecting with his cheek whenever he brought up playing with Kevin was enough to have him running in the opposite direction.

 

At night, after both boys had thoroughly worn themselves out, they found park benches to sleep on, huddled together in the balmy night for each other’s protection, or in lonely motel rooms, where Kevin read while Neil mapped out escape routes. The whole summer felt like a hazy half existence of trying to outrun their own demons by running their bodies ragged during the day, and trying to find comfort in each other, or at the bottom of a vodka bottle in Kevin’s case, during the night.

 

It was the last week of summer when, for the first time since they’d been running, Kevin was awake before Neil. They’d spent the night at a homeless shelter after the police had woken them up in the park one night and offered to drive them home to their parents. Neil had barely had the presence of mind to wake Kevin up and make up a story that they were just napping while waiting for their ride. The homeless shelter wasn’t much better than sleeping on a park bench but at least neither of them was exposed to the elements, and there was little danger of another encounter with police.

 

“Get dressed,” was all he said as Neil pushed himself up the bed. There were two paper cups of vending machine coffee on the table.

 

Neil got up and bypassed that for the bathroom to wash up and get dressed. When he came out, Kevin had the transcripts Melissa had put together on the table.

 

“We’ll stay in Oakland,” he said as Neil sipped his coffee, grimacing at the taste. “I’ve found us a school we can enroll. We’ll check out one of the places Melissa gave us. Do we still have cash for a deposit and some furniture or do we need to cash in bonds?”

 

Neil did some mental calculations. When they ran, Mary had taken five million dollars from his father. It should have easily been enough for the three of them to live on the rest of their lives, but false identities and safe passage from areas controlled by the Butcher of Baltimore did not come cheap, and Mary’s paranoia drove her to hide stashes of money across various hiding spots they had passed in different states. 

 

When she died, Neil had taken whatever money Mary still kept with them. They had upwards to quarter of a million dollars in cash, another three thirds of a million in bearer bonds. He knew between Seattle and California, there had been at least three stashes more for another two hundred grant, and probably another million hiding across the country, but he didn’t want to chance traveling to places too near the east coast, where Nathan Wesninski still exercised influence even from behind bars, and he wanted even less to have to travel to Washington state, where his father was incarcerated. Whatever money they had on them now would have to be enough until Kevin tired of this farce of living like normal kids.

 

“Yeah,” he answered. “We should be okay.”

 

Kevin nodded, crumpling his coffee up as he stood. “Good. Then we should get going while it’s early.”

 

This time, they took the train to Oakland. The school Kevin had decided on was in another subdivision further away from the city downtown area than the one they gone to see Melissa. The neighborhood was less affluent, probably one of those Melissa had called less-than-secure for pasty-faced teenage boys like Neil to be walking around in the late night. Kevin steered them first to an old apartment complex thirty minutes away from the school on foot.

 

Melissa hadn’t been exaggerating when she told them the place wouldn’t ask too many questions. Kevin managed to secure them a lease to a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor, filling in the lease form with his cover information. The spuervisor, a Polish immigrant who rented out much of the space to other, probably illegal, immigrants, had taken one look at the boys’ threadbare sweaters and faded, torn jeans, and told them to keep the noise down to keep the cops away, took the forms that Kevin filled out and the two moths of deposit Neil handed over, and left them with one set of keys to the front door, the apartment gate, and the bedroom. The two of them wandered inside to take stock of what they needed to get by way of furniture.

 

The apartment’s paint job was a faded pale yellow, with bleach stains in the carpeting, and a few chipped tiles in the bathroom, but otherwise serviceable. There was a ratty gray couch that Kevin wanted to throw away but Neil convinced him it would do well enough if covered with a blanket. Bed frames for two twin beds were shoved on either side of the wall of the bedroom, which a small dresser in between. They would have to get mattresses and desks, probably a safe to keep the more sensitive things they carried, such as Neil’s gun and their money, but it didn’t look like they had to spend a lot to make the place livable.

 

The school was their next stop. They had to take a bus to avoid the mid-morning California heat. Kevin took charge with talking to school administrators about their enrollment. The man in the admissions office nodded sympathetically at their plight: two brothers left to fend for themselves while their parents worked overseas. It didn’t appear to be a common scenario in affluent, prosperous Oakland, but in the particular neighborhood the school serviced, there were enough children of immigrants whose parents worked long, back-breaking hours in the Bay Area that two boys without parental supervision didn’t seem to stand out too oddly.

 

Kevin only had one question for the administrator and that was if the school offered Exy for PE.

 

The man smiled warmly. “Oh, of course. Coach Alejo has been trying his hardest to recruit players to the team. We had a few of our good players graduate recently and I think it’s put a hole in the team’s offense, but a new recruit on goal last year nearly got the team through the district eliminations. I’m a fan of the progress the team has made.” He paused in his rambling to look at the two boys. “What positions do the two of you play?”

 

“Strikers,” Kevin answered.

 

“Backliners,” Neil said at the same time. The two of them scowled at each other.

 

The admin laughed. “Now, boys, you don’t have to fight. I’m sure Coach Alejo should have something for the both of you. Sign-ups for the team’s tryouts should be two weeks into the semester.” Both of them nodded, still scowling at each other. The admin pushed one of the forms Kevin had already filled out between them. “I’m going to need your parents’ contact numbers in case of emergency.”

 

Neil’s eyes were wide as he looked at Kevin, who shook his head almost imperceptively. Clearly, he hadn’t prepared for this, thinking that him being of legal age should have been enough for the school. Neil took the pen.

 

“We usually try not to call because of the time zone difference,” he mumbled, hoping the dejected look in his face was cue enough to get Kevin acting. He turned earnestly to the admin. “We do have, um, an aunt in the city who looks in on us from time to time. Would that be enough?”

 

The admin clucked sympathetically. “Of course. I understand a fifteen hour time zone difference must be difficult for you boys to keep up with your parents.”

 

Kevin nodded, clearly having caught on. “We’ll try to stay out of trouble so you needn’t trouble her though.”

 

The two boys shared another look before Neil wrote in Linda’s phone number and Melissa’s name in the contact information field. The admin smiled briefly at them before taking the filled out forms briskly. Neil had never been so relieved at the thought of the overwhelmed school districts. They were reminded of the date for the first day of classes and each given the schedule of classes they had signed up for and sent on their way.

 

Their last stop for the day was at the mall to get the remainder of furniture they needed. Neil found a used books store and bought half of all the textbooks he and Kevin would use for the year, some notebooks and pens, and found Kevin at the sports store, looking at Exy gear. The prices for brand new gear were atrocious. Racquets of the good quality kind, not too different from Kevin’s childhood relic of a racquet from his time at Evermore, were at four digit price tags.

 

Neil pried the polished, marvelous piece of wood from Kevin’s hands and pointedly shoved an armful of books for him to carry.

 

“We’re not going to need that. I’m sure the school will lend us gear if we make the cut.”

 

Kevin scowled at his retreating back for a moment before stomping out of the store. “We’re not just going to make the cut,” he intoned as he caught up to Neil. “We’re going to crush them.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for homophobic slurs everywhere, and I'm sorry to say that this will persist throughout the rest of this story from this point on. :(

“What’re you doing?”

 

Neil startled out of his nap, wiping at the trail of drool that escaped the corner of his mouth and pooled into the rough paper of the textbook he’d fallen asleep on. He’d meant to be working on a paper for his English class, a formalist reading of Catcher in the Rye, and while Holden Caulfield was interesting enough, the Strunk and White guide book he’d been using for his paper-writing had easily put him to sleep in the quiet solitude of the school’s air-conditioned library.

 

It was only the second week of classes and already, Neil was struggling to keep up. In the five years they had been running from Neil’s father and his father’s men, his mother, Mary, had never put Neil to school, choosing instead to put Kevin to formal education and have the older boy relay his classroom learnings to Neil. So while Neil did not grow up a dunce, he had no concept of time-bound, graded studies the way Kevin did. He never really saw formal education as necessary to his survival, what with him and Kevin technically being ghosts, so once he and Kevin started at Bloomfield High School, he struggled to juggle school and Exy practices Kevin had started with him at the local community center.

 

The two of them started playing even before school started. Kevin had been almost unbearably smug when Neil conceded to playing and purchasing the cheapest gear they could find so they could practice. Neil couldn’t really bring himself to be annoyed with Kevin, not when the only time he felt alive was facing off his friend and partner in crime on the court.

 

Kevin shut his textbook and hauled him off the chair. “Get up. Tryouts start in thirty minutes and you’re not in gear.”

 

Neil scowled and cussed Kevin out under his breath, but obligingly followed Kevin to the locker room. There were already a few players changing out into their gear and Neil stopped short, glancing at Kevin askance. He’d never changed in front of other people and, even in their five years growing up together, had only just now begun to feel comfortable changing out around Kevin, after his mother’s death forced the two of them to look after each other more closely. He still wasn’t that comfortable showing the scars he’d grown up with to Kevin and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let a bunch of high school boys see them and judge him for the marks his father had left on his body.

 

Nonplussed, Kevin gathered his gear and shoved him into one of the toilet stalls to get changed. He could hear some exclamations of surprise from some of the boys who Neil assumed were already part of the team.

 

“Whoa! Looks like the Josten brothers are joining us for tryouts.”

 

“Hey Kevin,” another boy piped up. “Might wanna tell your twink brother to try out for the cheerleaders instead. I hear they appreciate pretty faces there than on the teams they actually cheer for.”

 

Neil tuned out the jeers as he changed but couldn’t help asking, as he stepped out of the stall, “Kevin, what’s a twink?”

 

Kevin scowled, his straight, aristocratic nose turned up against the group of boys exiting the locker room, still laughing at Neil’s expense. “Ignore them. They’re not worth your attention.”

 

Neil nodded and made to follow Kevin out of the locker room, when a quiet voice behind him stopped him in his tracks.

 

“‘Twink: slang term describing young or young-looking gay man with a slender build, little or no body hair, and no facial hair.’”

 

Neil automatically reached for his chin to feel around for scruff pushing out of soft skin but there was none and he colored slightly as he turned to look at the source of the voice. Emerging from the shadowed recesses of the locker room was a small blond teenager wearing the school team colors and armor appropriate for the goalkeeper. He looked vaguely familiar as he completely ignored Neil and Kevin and concentrated on fastening his gloves as he continued talking in a flat, uninterested monotone.

 

“‘The major theory of the origin of the term is that ‘twink’ is a shortening of the name for the famous Twinkie snack cake: a tasty cream-filled snack with no nutritional value.’”

 

Neil scowled. “Hey, I’m not an airhead.”

 

Kevin snorted when the blond boy ignored them both. “Was that the Oxford definition or did you just memorize it from Urban Dictionary on your phone?”

 

“I got it from Battle.Net,” the blond smirked, finally deigning to look up at them and then Neil’s memory clicked. It was the boy at the bus depot, the one who’d picked up his brother.

 

“Hey, it’s you!” he exclaimed at the same time that Kevin rolled his eyes and turned away, muttering about trolls. Neil ignored him in favor of looking the blond boy over. “Andrew, right?”

 

“Doe,” he replied in the same bored voice. Neil stepped aside to let him through and he stopped short in front of him, his hazel eyes glowing in the glare of the locker room’s fluorescent lights as he reached around Neil to pull his goalkeeper racquet leaning on the door jamb. His lips twitched into a strange half smile before he grabbed his racquet and finally left.

 

Neil blinked, not moving from where Andrew Doe had cornered him to get his racquet, until Kevin showed up at the hallway again looking harried and annoyed.

 

“Hurry up. We’re late.”

  


Coach Alejo was a Hispanic man in his late twenties. He was one of the youngest teachers in the school roster and the only male teacher who didn’t inspire a visceral fear in Neil because he was too short and too young to remind Neil of his father. He was good-natured and encouraging to his team, though it looked more like the rowdy crowd of teenagers would benefit from a stronger hand at the helm of the team. He organized the five young men and two young women at the tryouts into two teams and assigned a few of the existing team’s roster to play a scrimmage first before having them try to take shots at an undefended goal to gauge their playing ability and dynamics of the recruits with the current lineup.

 

Neil and Kevin ended up on opposing teams, with Kevin joining two of the boys whose voices Neil had recognized as the ones who had made fun of him in the locker room, while Neil ended up with the team’s captain and three other recruits.

 

The captain placed him in offense and favored two of the boys much bigger than him for the defense, and one of the girls as offensive dealer. The captain was their other striker and Andrew Doe brought up the final defense line at the goal. Neil only half-listened to the captain talking strategy, as he divided his attention between Kevin arguing with the veterans in his team, and watching Andrew look around in boredom, as if the court was the last place he wanted to be.

 

“Josten,” the captain called, and Neil shook himself out of distraction. “Places.”

 

He took his spot at first fourth and nodded to Kevin on the other half of the court. Kevin fastened his helmet, saluting Neil with his racquet and the game was on. Helen, the dealer on Neil’s team, scored first toss and hurled the ball towards Andrew, who looked bored even as he swung his racquet, sending the ball to first fourth. Neil and his mark were moving before the ball hit the plexiglass.

 

His mark, Joey, smirked as he caught the ball, lording it over the recruit that he was better, but Neil had planned for him to take it before he rammed against him, racquet snapping against the backliner’s stick to pup the ball into his net. Playing the last two weeks against Kevin made high school Exy seem like child’s play for Neil as he twisted and hurled the ball towards his captain, who seemed a bit surprised to suddenly be in possession, and awkwardly tried to get past his mark. Neil was already running, predicting that their captain would lose the ball because he’d been too stunned at the precision of the toss.

 

He was right; a moment later, the other backliner, Blake, managed to swipe the captain’s racquet, and the ball rolled to the ground. Neil was faster than Joe and he snapped it up and hurled towards the goal. It lit red as the recruit guarding the goal had been as unprepared for Neil’s footwork as the captain was.

 

Neil could already feel his fingers tingling with excitement. He’d never been able to score against Kevin when they played, and while logically, he knew these high school kids would never be on the same playing field as Kevin, making the goal still felt good.

 

The game continued. Kevin’s team was in possession and Neil watched and waited from the other half of the court as the other striker struggled past the backliner recruit from Neil’s team. Kevin leapt to the air just as the ball left the net of the other striker, and caught it, mid-air, in an impossible twist of his racquet. Neil watched, awed, as Kevin completely outclassed his backliner mark and swung his racquet to make the shot.

 

Beside him, the captain, Reggie, had taken his helmet off and was staring, jaw slack, as the goal lit red. “Fuck.”

 

Coach Alejo was pounding on the plexiglass to put a stop to the game but Neil’s attention was riveted to where Doe stood at the goal, staring, as the ball rolled off the net and to his feet, as if he couldn’t believe the short had gotten past him.

 

“Did you fucking see that?” Reggie was yelling to anyone who would listen as Coach Alejo unlocked the court doors and let himself and the rest of the team in. “That shot was fucking impossible!”

 

“Now, Reggie,” Coach admonished. “Language, please.” He looked up from his clipboard. “Josten! Both of you, if you please. And Doe.”

 

Kevin and Neil both jogged over to where the rest of the team and the recruits had gathered, but Andrew stayed behind at the goal. The spark of wonder Neil had seen earlier was gone, replaced by the perpetual mask of boredom.

 

“Dude,” Joey said, taking off his gloves to present a fist to Kevin, who stared at him blankly until he mimed bumping his own fists together. Kevin ignored him but everyone was too awed by Kevin’s performance to take his non-response as offensive. “That was savage, man! What was that?”

 

“A jump shot?” Kevin said, voice trailing up as if in a question.

 

“Man, I’ve only ever seen shots like those when I watch Court games,” Delilah, the other female recruit, exclaimed, eyes shining as she looked up at Kevin, who also ignored her.

 

“Nobody’s ever scored on Doe before,” Reggie explained at Kevin and Neil’s blank faces. “Well, not when he’s trying anyway. And it looks like he was today,” he clarified hastily at Kevin’s frown.

 

“Twinkie’s not bad too,” Blake said, leering at Neil as Joey high-fived him. “You could almost give Jeremy Knox a run for his money in the best looking twink striker department.”

 

Joey snickered at the joke and everyone else guffawed. Neil and Kevin only exchanged confused glances until Reggie finally took pity on them and explained.

 

“Knox is the senior year striker of the Amador Valley High. They’re the reigning champions in the state championships.”

 

“We played them last year,” another boy said. “Freakishly damn good for a twink, man.”

 

“Yeah,” Blake said, draping an arm around Neil’s shoulder. Neil shrugged it off and Kevin narrowed his eyes. “Just like you, little guy.”

 

“Get off my brother, asshole,” Kevin muttered darkly, his gloves squeaking against wood with how tightly he was gripping his racquet.

 

Blake laughed and held up his hands. “Hey man, just trying to repair bridges with Twinkie here.”

 

“Alright, break it up,” Coach called. “Reggie, setup practice shots with the recruits. Get Doe on goal so we can see what they’re made of and we’ll talk about who makes the team after.”

 

The players lined up at the sound of Coach’s whistle. The recruits let the team start first, with Reggie taking the first shot. Doe didn’t move from his spot on the goal as the ball bounced harmlessly on the goal post. Coach glared at him.

 

“Doe, you could at least try.”

 

Doe shrugged as if to say, _What would be the point?_

 

One by one, the team went through their turns. Doe made no effort to block their throws, even pointedly staring when the ball rolled to his feet at the weak swing of some of the recruits. Neil didn’t expect him to make any effort at his shot, but he wouldn’t underestimate Andrew. He’d seen how he’d moved to block Kevin’s shot. He’d been fast and deadly, but his raw skill couldn’t hope to match against Kevin’s obsessive precision. Neil swung his racquet. Andrew moved, too fast almost to see, and he tossed the ball back, hitting Neil at the ankle and causing him to yelp in pain.

 

Blake crowed. “Aw shit, you got owned by Doe, man!”

 

Neil turned to Kevin, clacking his racquet against his as he handed him the ball. There was a steely glint in the flat brown contact lenses Kevin wore as he took a running shot and swung his racquet. The ball he released moved like a bullet, whizzing through the air beside Andrew Doe’s helmet before hitting the net and bouncing through wood. The goal lit red again. Neil thought he saw Doe smile as Kevin haughtily turned away to rejoin him at the line, but when he looked again, Andrew’s face was as blank and placid as ever.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, I'm done with trying to stay in-character with this story now. Time to bring out the big guns.

Coach Alejo posted the results of the tryouts a week later at one of the boards outside study hall. Neil and Kevin had attended three more meets since then but had not played against Doe. Neither of them saw the boy again since the first meet they’d attended, and although Neil learned from Reggie that he was taking his math with Andrew Doe’s junior class, he hadn’t seen the boy in class or in the halls of the school at any time since the first tryouts.

 

He and Kevin had made the team, and even though Neil was selected as a striker, and Delilah chosen to fill the open backliner position, Neil was happy. Kevin celebrated by insisting they spend all their free time practicing at the community center to hone Neil’s fledgling skills and make sure he made starting lineup by spring. Neil went along easily, eagerly soaking up what knowledge Kevin could teach him in playing the position, even though he was almost always too exhausted in the mornings to roll himself out of bed to get ready for school. And in a strange way, he found that he was happy, happier than he’d been in  long time. Happier, definitely, than when he and Kevin were with his mother.

 

He wondered, as Kevin setup the cones for a drill he and Neil had been perfecting, if Kevin felt the same. This was the longest time since Seattle, when his father had caught up to the three of them and beat his mother nearly half to death (she died many hours later, on a lonely beach in California with only the waves and Neil’s savage weeping as the last sounds she would hear) that they’d stayed in any one place. His mother’s death still felt like a raw wound that hurt unbearably when he tried to poke it but the endless loneliness of the open road didn’t feel so daunting with Kevin at his side. He hadn’t thought about running, about who he really was and what he should have been doing since the two of them started playing, and even though he mostly found school difficult, it settled him that he could pretend to be normal even if just for a few months until his fate caught up to him.

 

He watched as Kevin took swings to knock the cones over with the ball and setup the drill again before turning to Neil.

 

“You try it.”

 

Neil did. His swing was nowhere near as powerful as Kevin’s and his aim nowhere near as precise, but after two rounds, he managed to knock all six cones over. Kevin gestured at him impatiently and they set up the drill over again.

 

“You need to use each rebound of the ball to swing it into the cone. Your back muscles control the force of your swing, instead of your arms, so you don’t tire out as easily.” He picked up the ball. “Here, watch. Call them out for me. At random. Come on, get on with it.”

 

Neil did and watched as the muscles in Kevin’s back rippled with each swing through the thin damp fabric of the exercise shirt he wore. The two of them had foregone wearing armor on practice days when they didn’t do one-on-one scrimmages. At the last cone, Kevin swung so hard, the cone dented and skittered on the hardwood court floor for six feet before coming to a stop in front of Neil’s shoes.

 

He stared up at Kevin in awe. “I want that.”

 

Kevin nodded. “Good. Wanting something is the first step for you to achieve it. You’re going to keep running this drill tonight until you perfect it.” Kevin’s eyes were hard with the promise of glory. “I don’t care of you hate me after, Neil. At the end of tonight, you need to be able to do what I did if you want to learn this sport so badly.”

 

They practiced until the community center closed at eleven. The courts were the ones that closed first, so the two of them had a few minutes to shower and get changed in the locker room with no one to bother them, and then they sneaked out through the custodian’s gate and into the parking lot.

 

Neil’s arms felt like putty. Kevin was a punishing taskmaster and he was obsessed with perfection. Neil had never seen this side of his friend’s personality until now, probably because he’d never been allowed to play with Kevin, but mostly because he’d been so concentrated on survival that he paid no attention to how Kevin had always been laser-focused to the task at hand. It wasn’t just Exy. Kevin learned everything with the same level of focus he set out the drills now that Neil thought about it, as he remembered when they first ran and he’d taught Kevin how to dismantle and clean his gun. Kevin had kept to the task to exclusion of everything else, even eating, until he’d perfected doing it as fast and efficient as Neil and Mary had done.

 

He wondered if this was how his stay at Castle Evermore was like, and if so, what great disservice Neil and Mary had done to him by taking him with them.

 

Kevin led them to a twenty-four hour McDonalds to grab their dinner. Usually, they waited until they got home and Kevin would cook something healthier and far more palatable than greasy burgers, but their training ran much longer that day and both boys were starving when they got their order. Kevin wolfed down his burger quickly and watched as Neil picked off the pickles and cucumbers out of his before putting it back together to eat.

 

“Why do you do that?” Kevin demanded around the straw of his drink that he’d been worrying as he watched Neil fastidiously wrap half his burger up again in the paper wrapper before he finally started to eat.

 

“Do what?” he asked around a mouthful of burger.

 

Kevin wrinkled his nose. “Jesus Christ, would you chew your food properly before opening your mouth?” He pointed at the small pile of pickles and cucumbers Neil left on the table, and at the meticulous wrapping of half of the burger. “That. Take those out and wrap your food again.”

 

Now it was Neil’s turn to wrinkle his nose. “Pickles and cucumbers are disgusting.”

 

“They’re healthy,” Kevin argued. “Probably the only healthy things in that mound of grease you’re shoveling into your mouth.”

 

Neil made a face. “I hate vegetables.”

 

“But you’re eating the lettuce and tomatoes.”

 

“I can’t get those out without losing the mayo and cheese.” Neil grinned sheepishly when Kevin rolled his eyes.

 

When he’d finished exactly half of his burger, he wrapped up the remainder and put it into his duffel bag, before turning to finish the remainder of the fries that Kevin had decimated, and his drink.

 

“You didn’t finish your food,” Kevin said, frowning.

 

Neil shrugged. He could still eat but he wasn’t as hungry as he was before they started eating and that was enough. “You’re in a good mood today and it’s the first time in a very long time since we ate out. I could finish that burger again later or tomorrow so I can enjoy it longer.”

 

“That’s…” Kevin paused, pursed his lips and shook his head. “Take it out and finish it, and we can get take-out if you really wanted more.”

 

Neil shook his head dubiously and finished his drink. “It’s fine. I still have homework to do when we can get home. I can eat it then.”

 

Kevin looked at him strangely but did not push and they stepped out into the balmy California night together.

 

The Mcdonald’s and the community center was a good ten blocks from the apartment they shared and the two of them walked in companionable silence. The Oakland nights, unlike San Francisco, was a lot more quiet, even though the streets were just as brightly lit. Neil still wanted to ask Kevin if he was happy but he wasn’t sure he wanted to break the fragile quiet between them.

 

It wasn’t until Kevin was fitting their house key to the lock that he turned to Neil, his handsome face serious and asked the question Neil couldn’t bring himself to ask.

 

“Are you happy?” Kevin blurted the words out as if he was embarrassed that he was even asking them. He stopped trying to turn the key into the lock and ran a shaky hand through his still shower-damp black hair as he turned to look at Neil squarely. “I mean… I know this wasn’t what you wanted to do. I know this isn’t what Mary told us to do, but I just… I just wanted to be normal for a while.”

 

Neil smiled. He hadn’t realized Kevin had been harboring the same uncertainty as he had been in the few quiet weeks they’d spent in Oakland. He touched Kevin’s arm impulsively, trying to convey steadiness where Kevin appeared so jittery.

 

“Yes, Kevin,” he said softly, still smiling. He could feel the jump of muscle in Kevin’s arm where his hand rested, warm against Kevin’s skin. “Yes, I’m happy. I know…” He paused and licked his lips, looking up at Kevin’s earnest face. “I know this isn’t really what mom would let us do if we were with her, but…” 

 

He looked up at Kevin’s eyes and realized that this close, he could see flecks of green through the ugly brown contact lenses that disguised Kevin’s eyes. It was such a pity they had to be hidden away in disguises because Neil was endlessly fascinated by the expressive green of Kevin’s real eyes.

 

“I’m happy,” he repeated, smiling at the look of relief that spread through Kevin’s features, and the tension Neil could feel in Kevin’s arm relaxed.

 

“Good,” Kevin said softly, leaning down.

 

This close, Neil could see the faint smattering of freckles across Kevin’s straight nose, the pale scar across his hairline, sustained in one of the many encounters they’d had against Neil’s father’s men. Kevin’s eyes flickered from his eyes to his mouth, and Neil wasn’t sure when between that and the moment Kevin’s lips touched his, that his eyes had drifted closed.

 

Neil had never kissed anyone before, but he knew Kevin had. Growing up, Kevin had always told him about the girls he would meet whenever Mary permitted him to go to school, and he’d told Neil about kissing some of the girls he’d meet. Neil had been stupid enough to ask his mother about it, and that day, she’d beaten him black and blue, screaming her paranoia into his face, that girls were dangerous, that they would lure him into giving up his secrets and bring him nothing but trouble. Mary had pulled Kevin from school that same evening and drove them two states away, and wouldn’t send him back to school until months later, after she’d extracted a promise that he would never let a girl get close enough to him to learn their secrets.

 

Neil had always wondered at the disparity of their treatment, that Mary would hit him over and over about something he had never done but would let Kevin off the hook so easily, but when Kevin’s tongue darted to lick against the seam of his lips to request entry, Neil suddenly understood what his mother was trying to tell him: that this was dangerous and forbidden and the temporary weakness he felt in his knees as Kevin’s arms folded around him when he opened his mouth could easily get him killed.

 

But this was Kevin, and Kevin was warm and safe. He’d protected him when he’d been at his lowest, when his mother died. He’d drawn him out of his panic and anxiety, and taught him how to play Exy, when he’d forgotten how. Kevin, who was his brother…

 

Neil started when Kevin pulled away, licking at his lips, his body turning imperceptibly to shield Neil from view of the long hallway that led to other neighboring apartments.

 

“Why did you stop?” he asked, breathless, the hand that wasn’t tangled in the sleeve of Kevin’s shirt dropping his racquet to touch his spit-slicked lips in something like wonder.

 

Kevin looked at him oddly. “People might think it indecent to see two brothers kissing in the hallway of their apartment.” He turned from Neil and let both of them in. “I don’t want anyone trying to call our ‘parents’ for indecent behavior.”

 

Neil grinned as he let Kevin’s sleeve go and picked up his racquet to follow him into the house, shutting the door behind him.

 

Behind locked doors, Kevin’s kisses were feverish, more insistent, as he drew Neil close, flush against his larger body. Neil had the sensation of falling, of being breathless and dizzy, od being simultaneously helpless and powerful as he returned Kevin’s kisses. He could smell the cheap floral scent of dollar-store shampoo in Kevin’s hair and feel the faint scratch of stubble in his jaw when Kevin moved to kiss his chin and jawline, near his ear, and Neil let out a sound he’d never heard himself make before as his hands scrabbled against the fabric of Kevin’s shirt, tugging to anchor himself, because if he didn’t, he thought he might float away. He felt hazy and light-headed, like he couldn’t really breathe right.

 

Kevin pulled away with a final lick at his lips, a small smile tugging the corner of his mouth when Neil whined and pulled at the sleeve of his shirt.

 

“I take it you like that,” he teased as Neil chased after his lips.

 

Neil punched him lightly in the shoulder, scowling when Kevin laughed. “I don’t really have a point of reference to say whether I like it or not,” he muttered, before finally letting Kevin pull away enough to let some breathing space between their faces. The tendons in his calves ached from standing on tiptoes to reach Kevin’s mouth to kiss even though Kevin was bending low to reach him. “You know how mom was when I even mention the word ‘kiss’.”

 

The reminder sobered Kevin up and he let Neil go with a sigh. “Yeah, I remember.” His tone darkened and Neil looked up to find memory clouding Kevin’s eyes. “It wasn’t that different from when I lived in the Nest.”

 

Neil’s eyes widened. Kevin had never talked much about what happened in his five-year stay at Castle Evermore, and Neil always thought it been Kevin trying to be sensitive about the abuse Neil had experienced growing up at the hands of his father, that Kevin wanted to keep quiet about his relatively more peaceful upbringing. Or maybe because Mary never wanted to hear anything about Kevin’s childhood. This was the first he had heard that Kevin’s time with the Ravens, the Exy team of Edgar Allan University that Tetsuji Moriyama coached, had been less than idyllic. Neil waited to see if Kevin would elaborate, but he was strangely silent.

 

He sighed and and turned away when Kevin only looked at him. “So, if you’re not going to kiss me again, I guess I better get started on my homework.”

 

Kevin nodded mutely and let Neil retreat to the bedroom while he busied himself with putting their gear away.

 

That night, when Neil was finally finished with the pile of math problems he’d put off in favor of kissing his best friend, Neil lay in bed in the darkness, staring long and hard at the ceiling and wondering what his mother would have said if he’d told her he wanted to kiss Kevin instead of some random girl on the street. Would she have approved because Kevin was safe, because he was Neil’s brother, or would she have hit him like she had before, maybe even worse because Kevin was his brother? He wasn’t sure she would have approved even if Kevin had spent five years on the run with them.

 

He turned in the darkness, his eyes making out Kevin’s still form on the bed across from his, and decided it didn’t really matter. His mother was gone and him kissing Kevin, or going to school and playing Exy wouldn’t change that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A McDonalds date needs to be in every first kiss scene i write in every fic. It's just how it is. Also, but ohmygod how did I write Neil so effing gone for Kevin? ooooooo


	7. Chapter 7

By the time the team’s first game rolled around three weeks after tryouts ended, Andrew Doe still hadn’t shown up back to school and rumors swirled that the recalcitrant goalkeeper had dropped out of school. Neil heard from the girls in the team that this wasn’t the first time Andrew had pulled this stunt: one of them had gone to middle school with him in a different school district and Doe had dropped out in the middle of the school year, when his foster parents returned him to Child Protective Services.

 

Neil hadn’t known before that Andrew was a foster, but in hindsight, it made sense. He remembered Andrew’s reluctance to be at the station to pick up his brother, most likely his foster mother’s real child, and remembered how Andrew had followed him when he went to meet Kevin, clearly unwilling to go back to his foster family. He wondered if, indeed, as the rumors said, Andrew was taken back to CPS again because he was a problem child.

 

Delilah, the girl who had gone to middle school with Andrew, sat in the middle of the team’s bus like a queen bee doling out advice and gossip about the team’s apparent pariah, as Kevin and Neil boarded the bus. Their first game was an away game with Skyline High School. Bloomfield was in the east side of Oakland City, and Skyline was up in the hills near Redwood Park. Skyline, like Bloomfield, was one of the larger schools in the district, and boasted their own Exy court. 

 

Neil and Kevin were buzzing with nervous energy at what would be their first game in their high school career, and Neil’s buzz was waning as he heard the tail end of Delilah’s more outlandish rumors about Andrew.

 

They were barely ten minutes out of the school parking lot when Neil got up from where he and Kevin were seated together at the back of the bus. He didn’t know if he was more annoyed by the rumor-mongering or the fact that Andrew wasn’t around to defend himself as people in the team started talking about him doing drugs.

 

Kevin grabbed his wrist as he left their seat and mouthed  _ No _ , but Neil was already walking down the aisle. He dropped on the empty seat across from Reggie, who sat near the front, two seats from where Delilah held court.

 

“Hey Delilah,” he called when she and her rumormongers didn’t stop talking. “I know you think you’re the most reliable authority on Doe’s disappearance, and I don’t know, the color of his underwear maybe, but you might want to scale you obsession down a notch just in case Doe comes back next week and decides he probably doesn’t want to be making out with anyone airing his dirty laundry.”

 

Delilah shut up, her jaw dropping as she sputtered for a comeback amidst the jeers coming from the boys in the team.

 

“Ouch, man!” Blake laughed, pounding Joey’s arm. “How’s it feel to get twink-slammed, Queen D?”

 

More laughter erupted, and Delilah finally shut up about Andrew. Satisfied, Neil made his way back to Kevin, who had covered his face in mortification when Ron had hollered, “Josten, we didn’t know Twinkie had a mouth on him!” to the raucous laughter of the other boys at the innuendo.

 

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Kevin hissed as Neil hunkered back in his seat and found the book he’d been reading for his English class.

 

“I hate gossip,” he replied, and tuned out Kevin’s admonitions for the rest of the ride to Skyline.

 

Kevin was still mad at him when they arrived and proceeded to ignore Neil completely as they moved to the locker rooms to change out. But even though he was angry, Kevin still stood by the toilet stall to hand Neil his gear as he changed out of sight. By now, all the other boys in the team had grown tired of giving Neil crap about changing out away from everyone. Neil didn’t care what they said but it helped when tall, dour-faced Kevin was looming over the boys who spouted some of the more offensive cracks at his reticence. He didn’t understand half of the things they called him anyway, so it mattered even less.

 

It was ten minutes to first serve by the time they finished changing, and Kevin’s anger had simmered into mild annoyance as Neil emerged from the stall. Kevin helped him stow his things into the locker. Neil caught his hand when he made for the door. The locker room was already empty.

 

He searched Kevin’s face for a moment, feeling around for how much he’d pissed his friend off. “Don’t be mad at me.”

 

Kevin sighed. “I’m not mad at you. But you’re putting yourself in danger for someone who won’t appreciate it if he ever found out.”

 

Neil shook his head. “I hate hearing people talk.”

 

“You care too much,” Kevin told him. His hand folded over Neil’s, warm and reassuring, affirming that no, he wasn’t, in fact, mad at Neil, as he laced their fingers together. “Come on, we have a game to win.”

 

Skyline High School’s Exy court was built near the edge of the campus overlooking the valley of Bay Area San Francisco, but the view of the city was barely visible from the courtside as students lined the stands. Neil scanned the crowds for any of the usual familiar faces of his father’s men as he and Kevin went to join their teammates on the court away side. He sat next to Joey, who was the only one in his group of friends who wasn’t starting lineup, and Kevin started for the court door, following Reggie, Blake, a tall skinny backliner whose full name eluded Neil but was just called Ivan by his friends, Ron, and Andrew’s sub-goalkeeper, Tom Campbell. Andrew Doe would’ve been starting line but he’d been missing for three weeks and Coach was about two seconds from cutting him from the team.

 

Joey was flipping a coin beside him as he stood to press his face to the plexiglass, waiting for the starting buzzer.

 

“Hey Twinkie.” Neil ignored him as his eyes zoomed in on Kevin who nodded in his direction, and Neil imagined the determined expression on his face obscured by the grilles of his helmet.

 

They’d talked the previous night of how the game should go. Coach planned to sub Neil in for Kevin, but Kevin had insisted they would work better on the court together, so Kevin would play the first fifteen minutes of first half, sub out for Henry, and then Neil and Kevin would start second half together, while Reggie rested. Kevin wanted to hold back until Neil was on so his passing shots wouldn’t be wasted on someone who didn’t know what to do with them. Neil thought it was a waste of Kevin’s fifteen minutes in first half but he knew he was right. Reggie couldn’t catch a rebound if his life depended on it, and Kevin just didn’t want to waste his energy.

 

He turned back to the stands when he felt an elbow nudge into his back. Joey stood behind him, leering up at his face. He and Andrew Doe were the only ones in the team smaller than Neil.

 

“What?” he demanded testily.

 

“Settle a bet for a bro, would you?” Joey grinned when Neil started to turn away. “We’re all wondering where your brother’s mad Exy skills come from. Reggie, Blake and Ron all bet he went to Amador Valley, but his playing style is too different from Knox. And Delilah’s right that he plays his shit like the US Court. So where exactly did you two learn the game?”

 

Neil narrowed his eyes. Kevin’s skills on the court was too glaringly obvious to ignore, and even with his tattoo covered with makeup, anyone who followed collegiate Exy would be able to connect his playing style to the Edgar Allan Ravens. The two of them had managed to change Kevin’s looks but if anyone were to look closely and thoroughly, Neil knew someone might eventually tie the gifted young nobody from a California public school to the bright young Exy prodigy that went missing nearly six years ago. He couldn’t rely on the elaborate construction of lies their fake identities had built to ease this conversation.

 

“Kevin and I…” he paused and cleared his throat as the starting buzzer rang. Skyline had the starting serve and the ball was in half court where Blake, Ivan and Ron were scrambling to steal it away. “We have an uncle who trained some with the US Court. Kevin played with him for a while when he was up in SF.”

 

Technically, it wasn’t a lie. Tetsuji Moriyama may as well had been Kevin’s uncle. He was his godfather, after all.

 

“Shit,” Joey said, slinking back into the bench as the buzzer sounded with a Skyline goal. Coach was clapping and yelling rallying comments to the team on the court even though they could not hear him. “Damn, now I owe Doe a good bit of blow for this.”

 

Neil scowled at the mention of Andrew’s name. “You know where Andrew is?”

 

Joey grinned. “Sure, I do. Helen just said he was sitting in Kaiser, or weren’t you listening to that part? He probably OD’d, if that stupid fuck hasn’t slit his wrists yet. Dude’s got issues.”

 

Neil didn’t know if he should be shocked that Andrew Doe was doing drugs, and that Joey was most likely his supplier, or that someone on the team preferred to just gossip about their teammate missing in action instead of going to Coach to tell him about Andrew’s condition. It seemed no one in the school administration bothered to find out what exactly happened to one of their students. Neil was simultaneously relieved as this meant no one would be asking too many questions if he and Kevin suddenly decided to up and leave, and affronted that no one cared enough about Doe to really try to find out what happened to him.

 

But if Doe really was sitting in a hospital, overdosed out of his mind, then Neil probably shouldn’t care as much as he had. It wouldn’t have been worth it. Maybe Kevin was right. Doe probably wouldn’t give a shit what people said or didn’t say about him, if he was doing drugs. Neil tried to put all thoughts of the goalkeeper out of his mind and concentrated on the game.

 

The Bloomfield Tigers was in possession of the ball and Ron lobbed it to first fourth, where Kevin easily caught the ball, ducked away from the body check of his mark, and hurled it across the court to Reggie, who promptly lost it to his mark. Kevin yelled at Reggie in frustration and would have dropped his racquet and thrown a punch if Blake hadn’t rammed into the striker he was marking and earned himself a red card. Coach called for a break and the players poured through the court doors for their respective team benches.

 

Kevin ripped his helmet off and was swearing colorfully at Reggie for his less than stellar gameplay.

 

“Dude.” Blake held his hands up to get Kevin to back off. “Chill out, it’s just a game!”

 

“Chill out?!” Kevin screeched, apoplectic with rage. “We’re three points down at zero because this sad excuse for a striker can’t manage a fucking throw, and you’re telling me to chill out?”

 

Neil came to stand beside his brother, taking Kevin’s helmet from him when he looked like he was about to bash Blake’s head in as he continued a litany of the team’s faults, roundly berating Blake, Ron and Ivan for their inability to get the ball to the strikers, and then at Tom for not knowing how to defend the goal. He ended his tirade with an ultimatum:

 

“Put Neil in with me and just get us the goddamn ball. We’ll take it from there.”

 

Neil didn’t miss Joey’s smug smirk. It wasn’t Coach’s and Reggie’s game plan but it was the middle of first half and the team was getting slaughtered without Andrew in goal. Coach was desperate to try anything and he mollified Reggie’s injured pride with a promise to put him back in second half.

 

Neil handed Kevin’s helmet back as he put on his own as well as his gloves. “Same game plan?”

 

Kevin nodded. “Crush them.”

 

Neil turned to make for the court doors, but Kevin stopped him. He thought at first that Kevin would attempt to mash their faces together even with their helmets on and with so many people in the stands, but Kevin only reached up and adjusted the straps of Neil’s helmet more snugly before nonchalantly turning to pull on his gloves.

 

Helen hovered over him with a wide grin as he made for court. “You two are so cute, did you know that?”

 

Neil didn’t and he didn’t need to know, because when he looked back at Kevin, there was a gleam in the older boy’s eyes that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the game. Neil knew there was an answering gleam in his own stare as Kevin nodded and they took their places.

 

The buzzer tore through the air in the court like a gunshot and Neil and Kevin were moving. The Skyline dealer had the ball and hurled it in a running pass to the striker marking Joey. Joey was tiny for a backliner, his build not very different from Neil’s. What he lacked in brawn and speed though, he made up for in cunning, yelling to Ivan as they double-teamed the striker in possession until the ball bounced harmlessly from the cradle of his net. Helen was gunning for it before the ball even hit hardwood, the swipe of her racquet swooshing air as she caught the ball, feinted around the defensive dealer of the opposing team before lobbing the ball against the court walls. Kevin was waiting on rebound and he darted around his mark, caught the ball and gunned for first fourth, moving impossibly fast and agile for his backliner to keep up. The Line’s goalkeeper was at the ready, swinging his large racquet as if to ward Kevin away, but at his tenth step, Kevin turned and passed the ball to Neil, who feinted left, ducked his mark, keeping his racquet against his body to protect the ball and shot it into goal.

 

The stands roared a collective boo at the first Tigers goal, but Neil and Kevin were already moving for the next play. Neil could feel the burn in his thighs as he ran after the rebound. The hours and late night practicing with Kevin honed into instinct and reflex with his footwork as he checked his mark, stole the ball and passed it to Kevin.

 

Kevin outclassed everyone in the high school court with his years trained at Castle Evermore. By the time the halftime buzzer sounded, he’d put Bloomfield at the lead, four to three. Between his and Neil’s flawless teamwork and Joey and Ivan’s unorthodox tactics, Skyline’s strikers never even got the ball for longer than a few seconds.

 

Coach Alejo was beaming as they poured back into the benches. “Now, that is what I call Exy!” He thumped both Kevin and Neil at the back good-naturedly and cheered as Helen, Joey, Ivan and Tom came back in for water breaks.

 

Reggie, Blake and the rest of the team had apparently already forgotten Kevin’s tirade and crowded around him, chatting animatedly about Kevin’s impossible goals.

 

Neil pulled off his helmet, smiling gratefully as someone handed him his water bottle. The game was even more brutal on a high school court as teenagers unleashed their pent-up aggression in the game. His shoulder was still smarting from the full body checks of the larger backliner that had been hounding him but seeing Kevin finally smiling and surrounded by their adoring teammates filled him with a sense of real accomplishment.

 

Reggie and Henry managed to lose their advantage quickly into second half, but Neil could see the strain the loss at half-time the Skyline players were showing, as their checks became careless and then outright illegal. Blake may have called it “just a game” but clearly, Skyline took the halftime loss to Bloomfield seriously.

 

At the third red card for Skyline, Coach finally took Reggie out and put Kevin back on. They were two goals from a tie and with Blake out, the remaining backliners were starting to tire, even when Delilah was subbed in for Ivan.

 

Kevin would have made quick work of the point gap, but even though Henry was a marginally better player than Reggie, he didn’t respond quickly enough for the Tigers to rally by the time the final buzzer sounded. At seven-eight, it was the slimmest win Skyline, the Alameda school district champs, had ever won on the first game of the season and tempers finally came to a head when the backliner marking Kevin took a swing at something the striker said.

 

Neil was pounding the plexiglass the moment Kevin crumpled with the punch. Joey and Ron dropped their racquets at the first sign of trouble and joined the fray, fists flying with gusto as the students in the stands yelled a chant of “Fight, fight, fight!”

 

It took three referees and the coaches of both teams to break up the fight and all the students involved in the brawl were slapped with detention for their unsportsman-like behavior since the game was over and the referees could no longer hand out red cards.

 

Neil waited for Kevin to limp out of the court but he was smiling savagely as he took off his helmet. His teeth were tinged red from where he’d bitten the inside of his mouth.

 

“Wow, you’re a wreck,” Neil remarked, taking Kevin’s helmet and gloves as the two of them followed their teammates into the locker room, where the team and Coach Alejo were talking excitedly of the season that lay ahead of them. No one in the team expected the outcome they got, what with Doe, arguable the only truly talented player in the team before Kevin and Neil, missing in action, but suddenly, it seemed like their prospects for the fall elimination season was looking up.

 

“Ah, the golden boys of Exy,” Joey greeted as the two of them entered the locker room to the unexpected cheers of their teammates. For someone caught in an on-court brawl, Joey didn’t look too bad, with only a glancing bruise on the corner of his mouth. Ron, on the other hand, sported two black eyes, even as he grinned at Kevin and Neil.

 

“We lost,” Kevin said pointedly, though even he couldn’t wipe the fierce smile on his face.

 

“We did,” Reggie conceded. “But it’s the first time we’ve had that good of a showing with Sky. And Doe’s not even here.”

 

“To be fair,” Helen interjected, “Doe could really only control the point gap. You and Henry are terrible.”

 

“Hey!” Henry yelled, mock affronted. He was already showered and changed and the Madonna concert t-shirt he wore struck Neil as quite obscene.

 

Coach Alejo clapped his hands for attention. “Listen this is a good start of the season for everyone. We lost the game, but this is a good showing in our scores, and I think all of you have the Josten brothers to thank for that.” He paused to let the team cheer. Kevin rolled his eyes and looked at Neil, who only shrugged. Coach continued. “Joey and Ron also have Kevin to thank for getting two hours of detention everyday next week. Fit that around your class schedule so it doesn’t conflict with practice time, boys. Now get showered and change out so you kids can enjoy your weekend.”

 

Neil smirked at Kevin as they shouldered their towels and waited for the other boys to clear out. “Two hours in study hall cut into your Exy time, huh?”

 

Kevin sat back on the bench he was on and leaned back against the lockers, his eyes flickering to Neil. “Stop gloating, you’re coming with me.” He reached for Neil’s wrist and tugged him down until he fell onto the bench beside him.

 

Neil leaned back and closed his eyes, turning his face so that his cheek was pressed to Kevin’s shoulder and smiled. Two hours of detention everyday didn’t sound so bad. Not when he could play Exy, and especially not when he could spend that time with Kevin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes:  
> 1\. Why Andrew was hospitalized or on LOA will never be discussed in this fic because I am supposed to be writing a companion fic to this exploring Andrew's issues and ideas. I just... haven't gotten around to it.  
> 2\. I'm going ahead to come out and say that their teammates are based on TRC characters, because I am just that kind of lazy piece of shit who can't create her own characters, even if they literally appear as just garnish to the story. More on that later.  
> 3\. Low key, if I were Helen, I would totally ship these brothers too. :/


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: some graphic scenes of violence in a dream sequence (tags are updated). If it's not your thing, please feel free to skip this chapter. Nothing really happens except Kevin getting jealous of Andrew, and Neil obsessing over Andrew. Also, an obligatory rooftop scene, because I can.

Andrew came back the week after, on a Wednesday afternoon. Kevin was already at detention, deciding to spend his lunch period in study hall rather than socialize with the team and the rest of the student body in the cafeteria. Neil was only in the hallway to pick up books for his next class at his locker before he joined Kevin in study hall, when Andrew walked past with a tall, reed-thin blond woman that looked officious and important. They went directly to the guidance counselor’s office and disappeared inside.

 

Neil stared after them long after they were gone. The woman with Andrew did not look like the same mousy-haired woman Neil had seen at the bus terminal almost three months ago.

 

He started when someone else’s locker slammed shut near him and decided to let it go as he made his way to study hall. Andrew Doe didn’t really need him poking into his life, not when there were dozens of other students already gossiping about him.

 

There were only two people in study hall spending their lunch hour in detention. Kevin sat up front a little aways from the detention teacher’s table. Mr. Parrish had looked at Neil quizzically when he’d first shown up to detention with Kevin on Monday, like he couldn’t understand people would want to spend time in detention without actually getting handed any hours. By now though, Mr. Parrish had come to expect Neil showing up in the middle of Kevin’s detention, with a book and sandwiches for each of them and he didn’t bat an eye when Neil dropped into the chair beside Kevin and produced two granola bars, passing one to Kevin, before pulling out a book from his duffel bag.

 

“Andrew’s back,” Neil whispered to Kevin, over the top of his paperback novel of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

 

Kevin was doing his history homework. He was in more AP classes than anyone Neil knew in school, and he only quirked an eyebrow at Neil before going back to writing notes about the French Revolution. Neil snuck a glance at Mr. Parrish, who appeared to be busy grading Calculus test papers, and wondered how much trouble he would get Kevin into if he kept talking about Andrew, and what it meant for their season now that he’d confirmed that Andrew probably wasn’t going to drop out of school.

 

“Do you think he’ll be back on the team?” he asked, unable to help himself. He couldn’t help thinking that with Andrew in goal, they might have won the game with Skyline.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Kevin replied, not looking up from his homework.

 

Neil looked up from his book to check if Mr. Parrish noted them talking. In the past two days that Neil had joined Kevin in detention, he’d mostly behaved so as not to earn Kevin any more hours.

 

“It should though,” he muttered. “Everyone’s saying he’s the best goalkeeper in the district, maybe even the state.”

 

“Mr. Josten.”

 

Both of them looked up. Mr. Parrish gestured to Kevin and Kevin shot Neil an accusing glance, but all Mr. Parrish wanted was for Kevin to take a look at his answers for his last quiz, so Kevin took his paper and held up an imperious finger at Neil to keep his mouth shut until the end of detention.

 

When the bell rang, all of three students in the study hall stood up. Mr. Parrish did as well and he approached Neil and Kevin before the two of them could make themselves scarce.

 

“Mr. Josten, the younger,” Mr. Parrish clarified when both of them turned. “I’ve let it slide that you join your brother in detention, but I need to remind both of you that this is detention and not lunch period in study hall. No discussions on your teammates or your game will be tolerated.”

 

Neil hung his head, chastised. School decorum completely eluded him.

 

“That said, you might want to go over with Kevin on some basic algebra functions, as he clearly does not understand how he arrived at his answers in his last quiz.”

 

Kevin colored at the suggestion. Neil tried his best not to look smug. So there _was_ something in secondary education that he did better than the perfect student that was Kevin Josten. All this time they’d been in school, he’d relied on Kevin teaching him everything he needed so he could somehow pass all of his classes, and even then, his grades so far had been mediocre at best, while Kevin had gotten straight A’s in almost all of his graded work.

 

“Yes, sir,” the two of them murmured before making a quick exit to get to their next respective classes.

 

* * *

 

Andrew was not at practice that afternoon, but Coach announced anyway that he was staying with the team and should be back in his regular class schedule before the week ended. The team’s rumor mill was quick to discuss the reason for his extended absence in between drills. Neil did not offer information on what he had seen during lunch period, so the theories surrounding Andrew’s return ran wild.

 

“Did you know Andrew was actually in juvy before he came to Bloomfield?” Joey said, shouldering his racquet and just about quitting his game.

 

Kevin had started teaching the team the same footwork drills he’d taught Neil at the start of the school year, but they hadn’t made any progress beyond basic footwork. Neil found the night-time training sessions he continued with Kevin at the community center much more interesting to do, but he wasn’t about to complain with basic drills, not when Kevin looked immensely pissed off that people were gossiping instead of doing actual training.

 

Ron snorted as he accidentally knocked Ivan over trying to mimic the way Kevin moved with the drills. “Of course you know that; you were probably, like, cellmates in juvy.”

 

“Hey, I’ve never been busted, I’ll have you know.”

 

All of the boys laughed and then continued to speculate on what could have landed Andrew in juvenile detention, before Helen finally said,

 

“My brother saw him carted off in an ambulance three weeks ago.”

 

“Wow, what for?”

 

Helen shrugged, doing a pretty good approximation of Kevin’s swing. Helen was only not half as annoying as Delilah because she only ever volunteered information she could verify herself. That, and out of everyone on the team, she was the only one who showed real promise on the court.

 

“Dunno, but Richard says he saw a lot of blood.”

 

“Badass,” Blake declared.

 

Neil had a sudden vision imagining Andrew in one of his and Kevin’s encounter with his father, staring down guns and knives, running, driving in the dead of the night in stolen cars, and shuddered. No, being shot at, stabbed, knifed or beaten to within an inch of his life probably wasn’t what Blake meant when he said Andrew Doe was badass.

 

“I’m telling y’all, that kid slit his wrists,” Joey said with finality.

 

“He’s such a weirdo,” someone, probably Ivan, because he was Joey’s yes-man, agreed.

 

Kevin made a noise of exasperation. “Are we going to practice or are we going to gossip here like a bunch of thirteen-year-olds playing dodge ball?”

 

“Dude, don’t slander dodge ball,” said Blake, his swing weak and pathetic and just generally awful to watch on a person his size and girth. “Beats swinging sticks and dancing around the court all afternoon.”

 

Kevin sighed in frustration but wisely kept his comments to himself when he noticed Coach entering the court. Neil schooled his face into blankness before Kevin noticed the laughter that threatened to bubble out of his throat. Blake had just figured out the quickest way to rile Kevin out was to call Exy stick ball, and Neil knew if he laughed, he would never hear the end of it from Kevin.

 

* * *

 

Neil slung his duffel bag over his shoulder, hunching as he darted stares to check if anyone was following him.

 

The week had gone as horribly wrong as it possibly could: first, he’d received his paper on the Catcher in the Rye reading, and apart from the giant red D at the top left, the only other mark his teacher had left him was a pointed “ _Do you even know what a formalist reading is?”_ He’d gone to Kevin in the evening to ask for his help with another paper, but Kevin had been moody and pissy all week since Andrew came back from his leave of absence from school. No one knew what Andrew had been hospitalized for, except that it had involved a lot of blood, a call to his social worker at CPS (the tall woman who’d accompanied him on campus to the guidance office was apparently the social worker in question), and had spurred a requirement for him to have regular meetings with the school counselor. When Neil asked Kevin about that, Kevin had, in no uncertain terms, told him to mind his own business and fuck off.

 

Kevin’s cold shoulder that night triggered something else that Neil had thought he’d already worked out of his system: nightmares of the sort where he was the one inflicting knife wounds on anyone and everyone he knew.

 

He dreamed one night of being back in the basement of his father’s house, holding the first knife he’d been given as a child--his birthright as the son of the Butcher of Baltimore--and Andrew Doe lay on the large concrete table with his chest peeled open, while Lola Malcolm, one of his father’s trusted henchmen, droned in a flat monotone about infinitesimal analysis: at what point in a table of random data would Doe’s heart stop beating if Neil’s knife slid up the slope of arteries and veins that pulsed in the exposed chest cavity; calculate the trajectory of arterial spray if the tip of the knife nicked the pulmonary artery snaking around Doe’s left lung. And all this, Lola said in Mr. Parrish’s southern drawl, while she pushed gray wireframes of the sort Kevin wore up the bridge of her nose.

 

Neil had woken up quivering and drenched in cold sweat, mouth open in a silent scream, and had been unable to fall asleep after.

 

The next morning, Kevin had taken one look at the bluish purple half-moons under Neil’s eyes and told him to sleep on the couch if he was going to be noisy at night.

 

He had no idea what had gotten into Kevin. He’d been fine the first part of the week, following their game with Skyline. The two of them hadn’t kissed since that night after late practice, but Kevin had been solicitous, maybe even kind, and strangely tactile since they kissed, and Neil was endlessly confused by his behavior.

 

The dreams though, he knew he couldn’t really blame on Kevin. His father’s birthday was coming up, and like every year since they’d gone on the run, Neil had had issues dealing with his parents’ birthdays. When his father’s birthday rolled around when Neil still lived in Baltimore, Nathan Wesninski took it as a day of great pride to impart the tricks of his true job to his only son. Most days, Nathan had no patience to deal with his child and left Neil’s indoctrination into the most painful way of cutting a man up without killing him to Lola. But on his birthday, he took special delight in demanding his son demonstrated what he’d learned from Lola.

 

Once, he’d had a seven-year-old Neil hoisted up to the table in his basement, and asked to demonstrate the bloodiest way to slit a person’s throat. Neil wasn’t sure if he could count it as a personal victory that his father had agreed to let him demonstrate on a goat instead of a person.

 

The nightmares persisted into the following week. Neil was a wreck in school, and even worse in practice. Kevin hadn’t made things easier by going harder on Neil in training, berating him endlessly for the smallest mistakes, until Helen finally took pity on him and told Kevin to back off. Kevin had stormed off the court and hadn’t spoken to Neil since.

 

And to cap everything off, once Andrew joined the team in training that week, he’d given Neil and Kevin strange, almost evaluating stares that made the fine hairs in the back of Neil’s neck prickle and stand on end. He didn’t understand what was happening, why the nightmares persisted past his father’s birthday, why Andrew kept looking at him like he knew something Neil had never given voice to, at least not in the presence of anyone who wasn’t Kevin, and why Kevin insisted on giving Neil the cold shoulder when he knew about the nightmares, about his fear of knives and blood and killing people.

 

He needed to get away, and the court offered no solace as it was just more of Kevin’s savage takedowns, more of his teammates jeering whenever Kevin Josten decided to pick on his brother instead of the rest of them. He’d tried staying home once, and Kevin cuttingly reminded Neil of the promise they’d made to Mary as she lay dying in that shitty Mitsubishi’s dashboard that they’d watch each other’s back. Neil wanted to tell Kevin to go fuck himself, but Kevin was right: no matter how angry he was with Kevin or Kevin with him, he would never forgive himself if something happened to his friend at school and Neil hadn’t been there to help him.

 

It was lunch hour and the din of the cafeteria promised a blooming headache for Neil’s sleep-deprived brain. He’d already run miles in the morning before going to school, in an attempt to cleanse his palate of the lingering dreams about knives and blood and his father’s basement, and it had only succeeded in making him and Kevin late for homeroom, and that meant more of Kevin’s bitching.

 

He didn’t know what to do or where he was going as he pushed the fire escape door next to the chemistry lab open, and climbed the stairs two at a time, trying to concentrate on the burn of overworked muscles instead of the mundane helplessness he felt.

 

He’d gone maybe five flights up when he finally found the door to the roof access. It was locked but Neil knew a thing or two about locks in the years of trying to run and hide and find places to feel safe if only for a few hours. A roofdeck probably wasn’t one of them, but it seemed every other inch of campus was dotted with students. He figured a five story drop would be survivable even if it meant inconveniencing Kevin with him breaking his legs from the fall. At this point, he was just desperate to clear his head and get his bearings back.

 

The minute he opened the door and stepped out into the sunshine, he knew he wasn’t alone. There was a jeans-covered leg that ended in a sneakered foot visible from behind one of the concrete structures that housed the air compressors, and a plume of smoke snaked heavenward from the same direction.

 

He stepped cautiously around the door, letting the sound of it falling shut announce his presence. He thought he recognized the black sleeved hand that carelessly tapped ash from the half-burning cigarette off the ledge.

 

“Andrew?”

 

Andrew Doe didn’t move from his spot except presumably to put the cigarette to his lips to inhale a lungful of nicotine. Neil’s fingers twitched with memory. His mother had smoked, and in the vulnerable state of mind he was in, he couldn’t help remembering how the mere presence of her, sitting and smoking at his side, telling him that they would be safe, would calm his jittery, fear-fried nerves.

 

“You don’t look like brothers,” was Andrew’s flat monotone reply.

 

For a moment, Neil was completely thrown. Two weeks ago, Joey had mentioned that he’d made a bet with Andrew about where the Jostens had learned to play Exy and Neil had been forced to concede information to back up Kevin’s impossible Raven-honed skills. Did Andrew know anything about Neil and Kevin?

 

His pulse, just minutes before already racing from the mixture of indefinable dread and anxiety, began to beat an erratic rabbit pace against the skin of his neck. He could hear blood roaring in his ears and he forced himself to swallow against his dry throat.

 

“Well, we are.” He stopped and blinked. “Deja vu?”

 

Andrew snorted and got up from his corner of the rooftop. Neil noticed that he still wore long-sleeved high-necked turtlenecks despite the temperature being 86 degrees, far too warm for the middle of fall, too warm for the thick sweater covering every inch of Andrew’s skin, and he wondered if Andrew had the same issues as him.

 

“Why were you gone?” Mentally, he backtracked as he realized how rude and entitled the question must have sounded, but Andrew looked as bored and placid and unfazed as ever, so he forged on. “Everyone’s saying you were at the hospital. Why?”

 

Andrew didn’t answer him. Instead, he leaned against the ledge, looking over the fifty foot drop as he continued to smoke. Belatedly, Neil remembered the pack of cigarettes hidden at the bottom of his duffel bag to keep it out of Kevin’s sight. Kevin thought he was ruining his lungs (and consequently his ability to play Exy), but as he lit up and inhaled the smoke curling up and away from his face, he couldn’t help but feel centered in the way his mother had always made him feel centered when he felt like driftwood tossed about by waves bigger than his mind could fathom in the open sea.

 

It was maybe ten minutes to the end of free period when Andrew finally moved from the ledge. He had to pass by Neil on his way to the fire escape stairs.

 

“You’re wasting good nicotine,” was all he said and he let the roof access door slam as he jogged down the entire five flights to make it to his next class.

 

Neil stood alone in the sunshine and let his cigarette burn down to the filter before discarding it over the small pile Andrew had made beside the air compressors. He would have to come back and dispose of the trash later.

 

As he walked down the stairs, not hurrying as he was already inevitably late for his next class, he wondered at the strange sense of calm he felt since arriving at the rooftop, and at the half-conversation he’d carried with the Tigers’ enigmatic goalkeeper.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Upping the rating because stuff happen.

There was no Exy practice that afternoon and Kevin still wasn’t talking to Neil by the time classes finally let out, so Neil decided to make himself scarce and hunkered down with his next paper to write, this time for environmental sciences. He didn’t think Kevin would want to run their private night-time practices, and Neil was behind on his school work because he’d been almost unable to function all week.

 

Bloomfield High School’s library was deserted on a Friday afternoon, so Neil easily found a favored spot hidden between two bookshelves. He normally wouldn’t have been able to get the spot: it was usually favored by students making out on campus. But it looked like most everyone preferred going to actual dating spots in the city rather than staying the afternoon in school. He settled in one of the more comfortable chairs in the quiet corner and took out the printouts he’d made earlier of the California fault lines. The paper he needed to be working on was a proposal for improving the Bay Area evacuation plans in case of earthquake or tsunami. Neil had already written an outline on the Japan FUkushima nuclear plant evacuation as a baseline to compare to the actual public records the city of San Francisco published of its own evacuation plans, and meant to outline the comparisons now, what had gone wrong in Fukushima, what could have been improved, and how to implement that in a city as sprawling as San Francisco.

 

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the middle of writing, but he’d been so exhausted from the nightmares and lack of sleep. When he jolted awake, his first instinct was to grab Kevin or his mother, and the gun he kept under his pillow, before he realized that he wasn’t actually lying down, Kevin was not with him, his mother was dead, and he had slept through the evening in the library.

 

He shuffled his papers back into his school bag and got up and stretched. The library was shrouded in darkness and the air-conditioning was already shut off, but there was moonlight streaming in from the giant windows on the far wall. Neil surmised he’d slept past closing, which meant he’d been asleep at least six hours. The crick in his back told him it was probably longer. He found the librarian’s desk and quickly checked the clock on the counter.

 

3AM, which meant campus would probably also already be closed.

 

He tried the library doors and was pleased to find them unlocked, and he let himself out into the cool fall night. Even at the early hour, there were still emergency lights on in the hallway. Bloomfield was a school in an urban location, so Neil suspected security guards or a night custodian roamed the campus to keep it safe, though why they would bother doing that on a Friday night when it was glaringly obvious that most students would rather be anywhere than in school was beyond him.

 

He found his way to the building’s main doors and tried it. It was locked, which was exactly what he expected. The twin thin wires he procured from his wallet were his mother’s. She’d been excellent at picking locks, a skill Neil, with his small, slim, nimble fingers had picked up easily, and one Kevin, with his larger hands, had yet to fully master, even after five years.

 

He made quick work of the locks only to find the doors chained on the outside. Neil sighed with exasperation at his luck. Of course he had to fall asleep in school and get locked in on campus. Kevin was probably livid by now at Neil’s unexpected disappearance. He wondered, as he made his way back to the library to find somewhere comfortable to spend the night in, if Kevin would try to find him or if his friend was too angry to still come look for him. Would he even try to look for Neil in school?

 

He stopped and detoured to the locker rooms to see if he could find a change of clothes in his or Kevin’s lockers. He thought he should also have a toothbrush in his locker, and he hoped Kevin wouldn’t be too mad if he borrowed his razor. As hairless as Neil usually was, he could feel the prickle of stubble against his jaw.

 

He wasn’t surprised to find the locker room locked, but it didn’t take him long to pick it. His locker was woefully empty of toiletries, but he at least found his toothbrush. Kevin had a clean shirt in his locker, so Neil headed to the shower area to wash his face and get changed. He was still brushing his teeth when he heard the sounds of a scuffle from down the hallway.

 

Gargling off the toothpaste foam, he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of Kevin’s shirt and went to investigate. He’d changed his mind about there being a night custodian, considering the school was bolted from the outside. The shadows the streaming moonlight created were long and eerie and Neil had a sudden vision of his father or Lola jumping out of the shadows to attack him with knives. He rounded a corner and nearly jumped out of his skin when he collided nose first into Kevin’s chest.

 

“Neil!” Kevin’s exclamation of relief washed over Neil like molasses.

 

Kevin was in his sweats still, his hair sweat-damp like he’d been running and in the hazy moonlight filtering in from the open main doors of the building, Neil could see the outline of his gun tucked in the waistband of Kevin’s sweatpants.

 

“Where the fuck were you? You didn’t show up to lunch and then you didn’t come home. I thought… I thought…”

 

Neil stared up at Kevin’s face, the shadows throwing his sharp features in stark relief. He didn’t think he’d ever felt so relieved at the worry and concern lining Kevin’s face, at the sliver of green that seemed to glow in the semi-darkness in Kevin’s eyes. He wasn’t wearing contact lenses and Neil thought it was stupid and dangerous for Kevin to have probably just jumped out of bed and start running around the city in his sleeping clothes to look for Neil. He leaned up impulsively and was gratified when Kevin’s lips met his halfway.

 

They’d kissed only that one night. He thought Kevin might have had doubts about kissing him, especially with how he’d been ignoring him all week, and then yelling at him over his incompetence on the court when he wasn’t ignoring him. But Kevin kissed him like it was the most natural thing to do after spending hours looking for him all over the city.

 

When Kevin’s tongue flickered over his lower lip, hot and slick and slow, Neil let out a sigh and arched his back closer to Kevin’s body. He sighed again into the kiss when Kevin’s hands, warm and rough with callouses from handling guns and Exy racquets, folded around him, one sliding around his waist to pull him closer, the other clasping the back of his neck to kiss and lick down his jaw.

 

“Kevin,” he whimpered when he felt teeth grazing the sensitive skin of his earlobe, followed by the swipe of hot tongue, and then Kevin blew a breath on the spot he bit into. Neil’s body shivered deliciously, pressing closer to Kevin as the hand around his waist slid under the frayed hem of the borrowed shirt to press deliberately on bare skin.

 

Neil shuddered as he felt the pads of Kevin’s fingers drag across the valleys and ridges of the scars on his side before sliding into the small of his back to draw him ever closer so that their bodies were flush against each other, and then Kevin’s mouth devoured him in a searing open-mouthed kiss.

 

The moan that ripped out of Neil’s throat was obscene, and Kevin swallowed the sounds of Neil’s pleasure as Neil’s body dragged up against his, his insides igniting as he felt the hard outline of the gun, and something else hard and hot, through the barrier of Kevin’s sweatpants and the scratchy material of Neil’s faded jeans. Kevin’s inky eyelashes fluttered and fanned against his sharp cheekbones as he drew back an inch. His eyes were black pools of desire.

 

“Neil, do you…”

 

“Inside the locker room,” Neil murmured, breathless from the heat of Kevin’s mouth, the feel of his hard muscular body against his. Distantly, he was aware that if they continued kissing in the hallway, someone from the school’s night security might show up and catch them, especially since it looked like Kevin had actually broken into the school’s locked campus to look for him.

 

Kevin pinned him against the locker room door as soon as they were inside, one hand pressing Neil’s hip to keep him in place, the other groping for the light switch. Neil blinked, momentarily blinded by the harsh white light that suddenly bathed the room, before his eyes settled on Kevin’s face, serious and determined, the green ring of his irises flashing, before he swooped in to claim Neil’s mouth again.

 

Neil moaned into the kiss. Kevin’s tongue swiped deft licks against his own, tasting the insides of his mouth, swallowing his sighs greedily until both of them had to pull away for air. His body felt like he was burning and the only way to soothe the scorching heat was to have Kevin’s hands on his skin, his mouth on his. His hips bucked against Kevin’s body, an involuntary twitch that drew a grunt of something like pleasure against the other boy, even has Kevin’s hand caught the hem of his shirt again.

 

“Can I?” Kevin whispered, voice hoarse as he tugged at Neil’s shirt.

 

Neil had a split second of panic that the sight of his scars might ruin the fragile suspended reality of their intimacy before it was overruled by an even more primal desire to be held and touched by Kevin’s strong hands.

 

“Yes,” he answered, raising his arms so Kevin could slip the shirt over his head.

 

Kevin paused for a moment to take in Neil’s scars. Some, he knew from having helped tend to them, stitching knife wounds up in dingy gas station bathrooms while they were on the run, some he didn’t, and these were the ones inflicted on Neil by his father from a lifetime of abuse. Neil was growing self-conscious with the way that Kevin stared, before Kevin lowered his head to mouth gently at the ragged round bullet wound scar at the juncture of Neil’s shoulder and collarbone, and then dipped his tongue into the hollow of Neil’s collarbone to taste his skin.

 

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, and then bit softly into the tender flesh, dragging another moan out from Neil, and making him shiver.

 

Neil’s thighs were shaking so badly that he wouldn’t have been hold himself up against the door if Kevin’s leg hadn’t slipped between his, and then his knees threatened to buckle as that thigh ground against his growing arousal.

 

“Kevin!” Neil whined, hands coming up to grab at Kevin’s t-shirt, and it was quickly discarded in favor of skin to skin contact.

 

Kevin’s body held a similar smattering of scars, not as many and varied as Neil’s, most faded white and jagged against velvet tan skin, smoothed taut over hard muscles. Neil flattened one palm over the planes of Kevin’s chest, fascinated by the way the muscles jumped under his touch. He pushed Kevin back slightly so he straightened, and, keeping his eyes locked on Kevin’s, bent his head slightly to let his tongue dart over one dusky nipple. Kevin groaned as Neil repeated the motion on his other nipple.

 

“Neil,” he whispered, voice ragged as drew Neil’s head back to kiss him again, slow and hot and filthy. “What do you want?”

 

“You,” Neil replied honestly. He didn’t know how to articulate the way Kevin’s hands on his skin was the only relief he felt from the fire burning in his core, that the few times he’d ever tried to relieve the urges brought on by his teenage hormones felt nothing like how Kevin’s body pinning him against the door made him feel so hot and utterly screwed tight and aching for release.

 

Kevin searched his face for a moment, before he leaned in to kiss him again. Neil opened his mouth to welcome his tongue to lick and explore and pillage and seek. He was only vaguely aware of Kevin’s hands drifting from touching his chest and stomach to move lower and rest on the button of his pants, smoothing over the trail of hair leading downward from his belly button.

 

“Yeah,” he sighed in answer to the silent question Kevin’s fingers at the fly of his jeans asked, and he felt more than heard the button flicked off and hissed as Kevin slowly unzipped his pants and pushed it down, along with his underwear.

 

He let out a long sigh as his erection was finally released from the confines of restrictive fabric, and moaned as Kevin’s fingers wrapped along the length of his cock, tugging once. Neil cried out, the sensation suddenly too much and he clung to Kevin’s shoulders as Kevin stroked him, long and slow.

 

“Like that?” Kevin asked, thumb flicking over the head to spread the bead of pre-come that had gathered at the slit. Neil nodded frantically, words failing him completely, as Kevin set a slow pace that made his nerve-endings crackle, but not enough to relieve the tightness he felt in his groin.

 

“Kevin,” he whimpered, fingers digging into the meat of Kevin’s shoulders. The pleasures was so much he felt like he was going to collapse, and the only thing holding him up was Kevin’s hand on his hip, and his other hand on his cock. “Oh God.”

 

Kevin’s eyes flashed, and he drew his hand away, drawing a whine of complaint from Neil. He brought his hand to his mouth and licked his palm before wrapping his hand on Neil again. The slide of saliva-slicked skin this time was filthy and so delicious, Neil gave a full body shudder. Kevin’s hand moved faster and Neil chased after that wet heat, whimpering Kevin’s name.

 

“Kevin, please.” He didn’t know what he was asking for, what he was begging for. All he knew was that if Kevin stopped touching him, he would die. “Please…”

 

Kevin leaned forward to kiss him again, even as his hand pumped faster, harder. Neil felt like a screw that was being turned, wound tighter and tighter, and sooner or later something would have to give.

 

“I’ve got you, Neil,” Kevin whispered in his mouth, his wrist twisting and Neil cried out as the pleasure finally became too much to bear and he came all over Kevin’s hand. Kevin continued to stroke him through his release until he felt tender and oversensitive and he cried out again until Kevin let him go.

 

“Fuck,” he whispered with a small laugh that sent his body trembling. He looked up at Kevin’s face to find him staring at his come-covered hand with something like awe.

 

“Fuck,” Kevin agreed and wiped the come on his hand against Neil’s chest.

 

“Gross.” Neil made a face. “Thanks, now I gotta shower all over again because of you.”

 

Kevin grinned. “Quit whining and get a move on.” He stepped back to let Neil through.

 

Neil started to peel himself off the door when he looked down. “But what about you?”

 

“Shower,” was all Kevin said.

 

Neil obediently pulled his pants off and toed off his shoes. His socks and boxers came off next and he  walked naked to the communal shower area, pausing in front of his locker only to grab a towel. Kevin was right behind him, peeling off his sweatpants and setting the gun inside Neil’s open locker before climbing in to join Neil under the warm spray of water.

 

Neil waited until the water had thoroughly soaked them both and washed off most of the come off his chest before crowding kevin against the water slick tiles and leaning up for a kiss. Kevin obliged him, groaning against Neil’s mouth as he ground his hips against Kevin’s hard length.

 

“Neil.” Kevin’s breath hitched and stuttered against his mouth.

 

“Let me,” he whispered, hands groping blindly against Kevin’s hard body until he found the hot rigid piece of flesh. Kevin’s hand wrapped around his, controlling the pace of Neil’s strikes, sharp, fast, unbearably hot and slick. Neil didn’t know half of what he was doing so he let Kevin gide him, let Kevin move and thrust his hips, fucking up into their entwined hands until he shuddered and let out a low moan, and then he was coming too.

 

They washed each other after that, swapping kisses as they soaped and rinsed each other’s body. Neil shut off the water and Kevin grabbed the towel, rubbing Neil vigorously until he was dry, before wrapping the towel around his waist. Neil picked up his clothes off the floor and put them on. Kevin’s t-shirt reached down to his knees. His legs were still shaky and by the time he’d stuffed his feet into his shoes, Kevin was already fully dressed and had packed Neil’s discarded shirt and the wet towel into Neil’s school bag, and the two of them snuck out of campus together.

 

Neil snickered as Kevin picked up the pair of bolt cutters he’d used to work through the chains on the main doors and stuffed it down Neil’s bag and they nonchalantly walked back to their apartment together.


	10. Chapter 10

The following week was a nightmare. Quarterly exams for most undergrads were scheduled the same week as the Tigers’ next game. Neil was only confident in the outcome of one of those, and it was not his exams. Kevin and the rest of the seniors on the team didn’t have the same problem; they’d already had their exams the week before.

 

After picking him up from school on Saturday, Kevin had mellowed some on his criticism of Neil’s shortcomings on the court. Neil’s performance as a striker, as a player in general, was a lot better than the rest of the team’s, even Andrew’s, whose willingness to put in any effort in his game appeared to be contingent on whatever mood practice found him in, and half the time, it seemed he wasn’t interested at all.

 

Nevertheless, the team was improving, and by the time Friday rolled around, everyone was psyched for the game to start. Coach Alejo had declared that scouts for college teams were going to start attending games and even this early in the season, he was already expecting talent scouts from most of the California Exy programs to be in attendance.

 

Neil and Kevin exchanged looks at this revelation. Neither of them had planned on staying long enough to get scouted and a four- or five-year college contract was out of the question. But the real worry was what the two of them were going to do if Edgar Allan was the one that came calling. Neil wondered if Kevin would even be able to resist the siren call of the best college Exy team in Class I NCAA.

 

They didn’t have to worry for that week’s game. Metwest High School’s team was small and Bloomfield was better ranked, though not by much. Still, Neil scanned the stands for the black and red Raven’s jerseys as soon as he’d finished changing and was relieved to find none.

 

Reggie refused to change the starting lineup even though Kevin argued long and hard to move Neil as starting striker. It didn’t matter. Neil was set to come on with Henry at the first time out or red card to relieve Kevin and Reggie, and from half-time, play with Kevin. It wasn’t the best of plans but Kevin had conceded that it would allow the two of them to catch up on any point gap in case the defense couldn’t manage their end of the court.

 

Neil looked from Reggie to Andrew to see how ready their starting goalkeeper was for the game. Andrew had missed half of all their practices from the start of the semester because of his leave of absence. The ones he did attend, he could barely be cajoled to put in any effort. Kevin had tried talking to him once, the week he returned to practice. Andrew’s reply to Kevin’s impassioned speech had been an annoyed eyebrow cocked in Kevin’s direction, before he turned away and proceeded to ignore everyone completely.

 

Neil sidled up to him as they jogged their warm-up laps. “Reggie told me the team got past eliminations on the strength of your skills. Why did you stop?”   
  


Andrew threw him a sidelong glance. “If you’re just going to talk about Exy, you can talk to the rest of the team. I’m not interested.”

 

Neil frowned. “But why play at all if it doesn’t interest you?”

 

“I don’t care enough about Exy to train,” Andrew replied.

 

“But it’s such a waste! You have real talent. I’ve never seen anyone make the kind of saves you have.”

 

Andrew rolled his eyes, already bored with the conversation. “You should just talk to your brother. He might be interested in what you have to say. I’m not.” With that, Andrew picked up his pace and left Neil staring after his back.

 

At ten minutes before first serve, the subs filed back to their respective benches. Reggie won the team first serve and the game got underway. Within ten minutes of the game, it was clear that Metwest’s team, while not at the same caliber as Skyline, had done their research. Their backliners had already identified Kevin as the strongest player in the team and were targeting him with violent checks the moment he was in possession of the ball. Kevin was fast and moved better, thought faster, than any other player on the court, but with two backliners on his back, Reggie had to depend on Ron getting the ball to him to score. Ron was a defensive dealer and didn’t know enough offensive moves to cover for Kevin and by the time Coach called him in to be replaced by Neil, Kevin was already dizzy from hitting the hardwood and the court walls one too many times. Still, he managed an impressive three goals, putting the team in the lead, at four-three. Andrew watched with practiced disinterest as Blake and Ivan fended off the opposing strikers.

 

“He’s not going to help,” Kevin muttered as he passed Neil on his way to the bench. Neil knew instantly Kevin meant Andrew. As weak a player Reggie went, he still tried to bag them the win. “I need you to give everything you’ve got until half-time. I’ll come back for you after the break.”

 

Neil nodded, shouldering his racquet as he got in position. Kevin’s backliner mark grinned at him savagely.

 

“Didn’t think your brother would quit on us that easily. Think you can keep up?”

 

Neil huffed, looking in Helen’ direction as she nodded at him. “Try me.”

 

The game resumed its brutal pace. Helen served up the ball Ivan had intercepted from his mark to Reggie. Reggie waited too long on the rebound to the wall, and his backliner easily stole the ball from under his nose. Neil was already moving. If the ball made it to half-court, they would probably lose the point to Metwest. Reggie positioned himself at first fourth and called to Neil. Neil darted after Reggie’s mark. He was faster than his own mark and easily lost the cocky backliner as he skidded into a full body check for Reggie’s backliner. The ball bounced harmlessly away. Helen and the opposing dealer ran after it. Helen was just fast enough to scoop the ball up and hurl it in Reggie’s direction.

 

For once in his miserable high school Exy career, Reggie finally caught it, twisted easily away from his backliner (he was impressive dodging opposing players from any manner of bodily contact, Neil was almost amazed), and hurled the ball to Neil. His backliner had crowded him to almost all the way through half-court, so he used up his ten steps and hurled the ball into the wall, catching it in rebound. He twisted the end of his racquet, sticking it out at the right angle, just enough for his mark, standing too close for comfort, to trip and sprawl backwards, leaving Neil free to take the shot. He zipped past the goalkeeper’s racquet, too close to be blocked, and the goal flared red.

 

By the time half-time came, the score was seven-four, Tiger’s favor. Blake and Joey, the backliners on the court with Neil, were laughing, exhilarated over a petty foul the Metwest strikers had just done. Reggie was jumping on the benches, throwing hugs at everyone who would come within a three-foot radius, and Delilah high-fived Tom and Helen as they stepped out of court. Kevin was waiting for Neil with a water bottle, grinning wolfishly.

 

Neil beamed at Kevin’s wordless approval and settled beside him, tucking himself to the back to avoid conversation with his teammates, but basking in their happiness all the same. Only Andrew wasn’t celebrating, and Neil shifted uncomfortable under the weight of the arm Kevin had flung around his shoulder as he laughed good-naturedly at Ron’s impression of the frustrated scream the Metwest captain had let out at the sound of the half-time buzzer.

 

Andrew was staring, very pointedly, at exactly the way Kevin’s arm was wound around Neil, and it was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

 

* * *

 

They completely wiped out Metwest. By the time the team made it to the showers, everyone had screamed themselves hoarse from excitement over the win, fourteen-five, and even Coach Alejo was dreaming of making state finals. Neil was completely wiped; he and Henry brought the score up three goals in the last ten minutes after Kevin completely slaughtered the defense and Metwest played their damned hardest beating on the strikers at the last few minutes in retaliation for the stinging loss.

 

Everyone in the team still wanted to party the Friday night off after their win but Neil just wanted to shower and go to bed. He’d observed Andrew watching him and Kevin the minute the court doors opened to let the rest of the team in. There was something knowing in Andrew Doe’s stare that he couldn’t shake off and he wasn’t sure Kevin had seen it, so focused was he on planning out their next game with Coach.

 

But Neil had seen him looking and he was afraid of the weight of that stare. It felt like the blond boy knew something Neil hadn’t quite figured out yet.

 

Blake and Ron were toweling down after their shower when they approached Neil and Kevin who were still sitting on a bench catching their breaths.

 

Ron nudged Kevin’s shoulder, jostling Neil’s head from where he’d been leaning against Kevin’s other shoulder. “So, coming with us?”

 

Neil craned his head to look up at Kevin’s face. “Where are we going?”

 

“Oh, you’re not coming,” Blake grinned.

 

Kevin frowned. “He’s not?”

 

Ron looked affronted. “Dude, we talked about this. Blake and I spent two hours convincing Joe not to get your brother into a strip club. Contrary to what you may assume of us, we’re decent people.”

 

“Yeah, no one wants their little brother watching while you get some ass.”

 

“That’s disgusting.” Kevin made a face.

 

“See, the point is,” Ron said, jostling Neil once again. Neil pushed off and decided to root through his locker for clean clothes instead. “No one wants a wet blanket, snot-nosed little brother calling mommy to pick the two of you up because he got drunk on virgin Shirley Temples.”

 

“I’m fifteen, not twelve,” Neil deadpanned.

 

“If you think about it,” Blake said, “Twinkie could probably give those girls a run for their money.”

 

Kevin shoved him when he started miming photo-framing Neil from behind with his fingers. “I’m not going.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because strip clubs objectify women and that grosses me out?”

 

“What, the objectification or the women?” Ron sniped. Blake cackled. “Look, man, the seniors on the team are all going. Joey’s mom pays for the drinks. She owns this joint.”

 

“Yeah, even Helen’s going,” Blake wheedled. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna sissy out on us?”

 

Ron whirled around at Neil, draping an arm around his shoulder. “You’re not gonna tell your mama, are you, Twinkie?”

 

Blake jostled him again, snaking an arm around his back to try to grope his ass. “If you’re good, we’ll let you in on next time when Joey won’t try to corner you and grope your ass?”

 

“Thanks,” Neil said, rudely elbowing him away, “but I’m already getting my ass groped right now, and if you don’t stop, I’m going to break your hand.”

 

Kevin scowled and shoved both boys away. “Stop touching him. Fine. I’ll go.”

 

The two boys whooped.

 

Neil sighed as he shouldered his towel. “Fine, I’m not waiting up.” He turned just as Blake and Ron were on their way out of the locker room. “Also, please don’t puke in the hallway.”

 

If he’d stayed by the door longer, he would have seen blond hair and piercing hazel eyes hovering in the dim hallway, watching the exchange with undisguised interest.

 

* * *

 

Kevin spent half of Saturday completely hung over. Neil didn’t bother chastising him for the puddle of disgusting hours old vomit that their next door neighbor had loudly complained about at 7AM that morning, loudly knocking on their door and almost breaking it down with the demand that Neil clean up the small puddle of bile and half-digested shrimp littering the entrance to the fire escape stairs that the two of them usually took in favor of the elevator to their third floor apartment.

 

It didn’t take him long to clear up the mess, but it did require an obscene amount of floor cleaner and bleach to get rid of the stench in the fire escape. The inside of his nostrils were stinging with the harsh smell of bleach by the time he’d finished, and when he went back to their apartment, Kevin was still passed out cold, body only on half of his bed, and reeking badly of cheap alcohol and the weird floral perfume Helen liked to use. It wasn’t that big of a leap of imagination to arrive at the conclusion that Kevin had needed to catch a ride home with the only female teammate they had who had gone with the boys to the strip club.

 

Neil let out a disgusted noise as he stomped to the kitchen to make himself coffee and find some aspirin for when Kevin woke from his hangover, whining like a baby. He’d gotten some of the vomit on his clothes when he’d been on his hands and knees scrubbing out the evidence of his brother’s drunken revelry and he grimaced as he realized he had no clean clothes left to change to. Kevin was an obnoxious snot about laundry and hadn’t included his things when he’d last made the trip to the laundromat down the street.

 

He was still debating whether he was going to be petty and steal the last clean set of Kevin’s clothes when someone knocked on the door again. Neil sighed and set aside his coffee to investigate.

 

Their neighbor, a middle-aged Mexican woman who had been thrilled at the sight of Kevin when they first moved in was at the door with two identical-looking young children in tow. The children blinked up at Neil stupidly while the woman wrinkled her nose, likely because Neil smelled of Kevin’s puke.

 

“There is a boy outside looking for you,” was all she said before she cast a judgmental look at Neil’s disheveled appearance and turned away towards the elevator, ushering her children away from Neil’s door and lecturing them in Spanish that if they didn’t eat their vegetables and said their prayers, they would end up growing up like a hooligan like Neil.

 

He shook his head as he made for the stairs. His Spanish was rusty but passable enough to understand when he was being made fun of. When he opened the door to the main hallway, he was surprised to see Andrew Doe standing at the desk that should have been used for reception had their building actually bothered with one. He was looking over the mailboxes with a curiosity that unnerved Neil when he realized his and Kevin’s box was the only one empty. Ghosts like him didn’t receive mail and he briefly wondered if Kevin obsessively throwing away the junk mail every morning before school had been a good idea.

 

“How did you know I live here?” he demanded when Andrew ignored him in favor of poking his fingers through the slats of the mailboxes. He looked like he was trying to steal Neil’s neighbors’ mail.

 

Doe shrugged, not looking at him. Neil noted that Doe’s eyes were rimmed in purple bags that were dark enough to look like bruises.

 

“I followed your brother,” he said when Neil only looked at him blankly. “He made Helen drop him off five blocks from your place even though he could barely walk. Curious, don’t you think?”

 

Neil folded his arms across his chest. He knew that even as drunk as he had been the night before, Kevin wouldn’t knowingly give out the place where they lived to anyone. It was just how the both of them had been conditioned after so many years running. Even though they had gotten the place legally, the kind of conditioning they’d had where curious strangers could just as well be paid informants of Neil’s father was not the kind of habit that was easy to shake, and he was sure that even drunk off his ass and not knowing where he was going, Kevin still would have worked out a way to shake off any potential stalkers on his walk back. He was proven right when Andrew slanted a suspicious look at him even as he pretended to study the the yellowing wallpaper of the building hall.

 

“Did you know Kevin got lost three times, took four wrong turns and attempted break-ins to other buildings before he found yours?”

 

He didn’t answer. He wasn’t stupid enough to let Doe goad him into talking about his and Kevin’s secrecy.

 

“What do you want?”

 

Andrew flashed him a smile, all teeth and no warmth, predatory as a shark. “Oh, I don’t want anything. But I have something you want. Or were you forgetting that night when your gallant brother sprung you out of a locked campus?”

 

Neil’s eyes narrowed even as he paled. The campus had been silent when Kevin arrived and they’d talk the night over after (at the memory, the paleness in his cheeks were threatened by the heat creeping from his ears). Kevin hadn’t seen a soul when he’d broken into school and he’d ascertained there were no CCTVs watching the main doors when he went to town with the bolt cutters.

 

“What about it?” he demanded, fighting to keep his voice even. His every instinct told him to run, to wake Kevin upstairs, pick up their belongings and run as far away from Oakland, as far away from Andrew Doe’s knowing eyes and devilish smirk as he can. “I fell asleep in the library and woke up to find the school closed. Kevin was just trying to get me home.”

 

Andrew laughed and it was the most unpleasant sound Neil had ever heard. “Do you seriously want to have this discussion in the hallway where all your neighbors can hear?”

 

Neil scowled and stomped in the direction of the elevator. He punched the number for the top floor instead of his and Kevin’s floor and got in. Andrew followed him easily, smiling as he stood next to Neil, watching him fidget with the sleeves of his hoodie. The elevator pinged on the top floor, the roof deck. Neil stepped out into the cool fall morning air and Andrew breezed past him.

 

“What, no invite for coffee to your place?”

 

“Kevin doesn’t like visitors,” Neil replied testily. “And he’s drunk.”

 

“Oh,” said Andrew, drawing something from his messenger bag. Neil’s eyes widened as Andrew produced his gun. In the heat of the moment in the locker room, he’d forgotten that Kevin had brought his gun when he came looking for him that night. “Then I guess he won’t mind so much if I keep this? Is this thing even licensed? I haven’t had the time to check out the serial number.”

 

Neil watched as Andrew handled the Beretta. It was a small enough handgun that made it easy to conceal and carry but the way Andrew handled it told Neil the other boy hadn’t had much experience in handling firearms, which was what he expected, considering California gun control laws.

 

“Took me a while to check it it out, but it has a full magazine and live rounds,” Andrew said conversationally, as if he was just commenting on the weather. “Do you think if I looked it up, I’d find it licensed to a Kevin Josten? Pretty sure you’re too young to carry much less own a gun in California.”

 

Neil was pretty sure he’d find nothing on the gun’s paper trail. It had been his mother’s gun and the paperwork on it would have been flawless and lead nowhere  if it was ever found outside their possession. He decided to call Andrew’s bluff.

 

“Well, why  _ don’t _ you check it out? Since you have it anyway.” Neil smiled unpleasantly. “That is, if you’re even willing to go anywhere carrying that thing. I heard gun laws are tight in California.”

 

Andrew pointed the barrel in his face, pretending to take aim. Neil didn’t flinch. He’d faced much worse than a deranged teenager with a questionably licensed firearm through a third of his life, and he was happy to let Andrew continue handling it to muck up his and Kevin’s fingerprints.

 

Andrew grinned nastily at him and put the gun away. “Maybe I will. Who knows what I’ll find. Maybe it’ll even be useful. Unless you and your brother were trying to kill anyone in school?”

 

Neil thought savagely that the only person he would like to kill right at that moment was Andrew Doe.

 

“Or maybe,” Andrew said, considering, “your brother was trying to scare someone with it. Night custodian, maybe? Or how about fifteen year old twinks trapped in the library?”

 

Neil couldn’t help himself and laughed at the absurdity of what Andrew was suggesting. Kevin was his brother. He would never betray him. He shouldn’t have worried about Doe at all. He was just another stupid teenager with a conspiracy theory, maybe imagining Kevin or Neil involved in school shootouts like a couple of out-of-control youths.

 

“That’s hilarious. Kevin’s nothing like that, and if you’re done with your tinfoil hat theories, I’d like to get my gun back now.”

 

Andrew pulled the gun on him again, this time flicking off the safety. Neil stared him down, impassive.

 

“Curious that you don’t even flinch when staring down the barrel,” Andrew commented, flicking the safety back on and pushing it against Neil’s chest. “Be careful someone doesn’t catch you with that.”

 

With a careless flip of his hand, Andrew stalked away, taking the stairs this time, leaving Neil staring after his retreating back. Neil shook his head and sighed, tucking the gun out of sight in the large front pocket of his hoodie and followed him down, so he could check if Kevin was finally awake so he could yell and rail at him for his carelessness.


	11. Chapter 11

By the following week, Neil and Kevin still weren’t talking. Neil was angry that Kevin had been so careless with their cover and he was starting to second guess himself for letting Andrew Doe corner him like he did on the roof of his apartment. Logically, he knew there was nothing to be afraid of. Doe didn’t know anything and if he thought he could rattle Neil by spouting his insane theories about Kevin, he was gravely mistaken. At the same time, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Doe was still watching him and Kevin and the scrutiny was making his skin itch and Kevin’s sullen silence wasn’t helping.

 

Kevin had already been mostly awake by the time Neil was sure Andrew was gone from their apartment and he slipped back into their house. Kevin had taken one look at the gun Neil set on their counter and paled so badly, Neil could see the green of the vein running through his forehead. He’d started to stammer out an apology then cut himself off and scowled at Neil when Neil revealed who exactly had brought the gun back to their place. Kevin’s muttered “Fine!” had been a strange mix of frustration and pettiness that Neil had never heard from his brother.

 

“Dude, it’s not cute when the two of you are fighting,” Delilah whined at practice on Tuesday that week.

 

The two of them weren’t actively sniping at each other like that time Kevin had been irrationally mad at Neil over something Neil hadn’t completely figured out yet. Instead, they’d gone for completely avoiding each other and refusing to look at each other, which, given how close they were, made for some really awkward time during practice.

 

“Hey, hey,” Joey demanded, snapping his fingers at the two strikers, who studiously avoided each other’s gaze. “You two better kiss and make up by Friday. It’s Halloween and you’re not allowed to be party poopers at my joint.”

 

“I’m not going,” Kevin answered automatically, gripping his racquet. He had the ball and even though he and Neil were on the same team in their scrimmage, he refused to pass, choosing instead to rebound against the plexiglass walls before taking his shot on goal. Tom fumbled and missed and the goal lit up with the score.

 

“You can’t not go, man,” Blake said. “Joey hosts the best Halloween parties and the whole team has to be there. It’s just how it is.”

 

Neil rolled his eyes and wondered what the whole fuss about Halloween was. Everyone had been talking about it all week. Helen and Delilah had compared notes on how elaborate and expensive their costumes were going to be, and had already declared themselves Neil’s designated shopping partners for a costume. When he’d told them he wasn’t spending money on a silly outfit he would wear all of one time, Helen had told him to shut up and waved her credit card in his face, and declared that he was going shopping with them for costumes whether he liked it or not.

 

“What about you, Neil?” Reggie asked. “Don’t tell me we gotta call your mama up in wherever she is to ask her to let you go.”

 

“Wow,” Neil said. “I’d go if there’s gonna be strippers.”

 

Kevin cast him a baleful glance that Neil returned evenly. Helen draped an arm around his shoulder.

 

“Oh, my child, you are all grown up.” She punctuated her over-dramatic statement by pulling off her helmet and pressing a noisy smack on his.

 

Kevin fumed silently and as their scrimmage continued, Neil found himself looking forward to Friday after all. He didn’t notice that from the away goal, Andrew stared at him and Kevin, just as he always had.

 

* * *

 

Helen and Delilah snagged him from his last class that evening to drag him to the mall to shop for his costume, chastising him for his reluctance to dress up when he had already agreed to go to Joey’s party, and that it was criminal for him to go and not get dressed up.

 

“All that good looks and you insist on dressing like a hobo,” Delilah clucked as she stepped out of Helen’s fancy SUV. “At least Kevin dresses appropriately for himself. Does he really not tell you that you look homeless in those hoodies?”

 

Neil shrugged. Clothes for him was just another means to blend in the background, like his black hair and muddy brown contact lenses. All his clothes were pale and faded, with hems fraying from the constant fidgeting of his hands. He’d taken his mother’s advice to heart, especially since his hair and eyes made him distinctive. Growing up, Kevin, who had continued to prefer wearing all-black outfits even after he had left Castle Evermore, had constantly called him a washed out painting, with his pale, wan face and his pale, baggy, faded clothes, and his constantly dirt-stained sneakers that may have started its life white but were now a drab gray from constant washing and cleaning. Neil didn’t really care as long as it enabled him to fade into the background. He much preferred that people’s attention were on his tall, striking friend than on him.

 

“Man, all those chicks in your grade will not recognize you when we’re done with you,” Helen added, dragging the two of them to a costume shop, where she started rifling through the clothes on display.

 

Neil didn’t understand why he would want any of the girls in his year to notice him. He didn’t have any schoolwork he needed to do with them at the moment and there wasn’t anything particularly difficult that he couldn’t ask Kevin about. Well, if he swallowed his pride, that is. He told Helen that and the two girls looked at him strangely.

 

“Oh my God, Neil!” Delilah exclaimed before she broke into gales of laughter.

 

Helen’s incredulous expression baffled him. “Seriously, you’ve never noticed that half the female population of our school is ogling you and Kevin during practice?”

 

“I mean,” Delilah said, checking him out with a critical eye, “If you were maybe a little taller, even I’d go out with you.”

 

Neil wasn’t quite sure if that was a compliment, but Helen saved him easily with a smirk targeted in Delilah’s direction.

 

“Really, D? I always thought you favored midgets, what with you stalking Doe from middle school to Bloomfield.”

 

Neil let them banter as they pulled outfits from hangers and dumped them all in his arms. Costume-shopping looked exhausting as Helen pulled and discarded vampire and ghost outfits one by one. Delilah found a Tinkerbell fairy costume and glitter gauze wings for herself and looked up at the growing pile of clothes in Neil’s arms.

 

“Found anything yet?” she demanded as she took her costume up to a mirror to gauge its fit on her. “I think we should do a theme. Like, I dunno, wings, maybe? Then we can be, like, Reggie’s Angels. Hey, do you think fishnets go with this or should I do nylon?”

 

Helen rolled her eyes. “When have you ever seen a Peter Pan where Tink wore fishnets? I watched the porn version and all she wore was a thong. Also, your Reggie obsession is disgusting. You and I both know the Dream Pack only fuck each other.”

 

“The who?” Neil asked from behind the mound of clothes now taller than his head.

 

“The Dream Pack,” Delilah repeated. “It’s what Reg, Blake, Ron, Ivan and Joey call themselves.”

 

“Yeah, they fancy themselves God’s gift to the women of Oakland,” Helen muttered, though she didn’t sound particularly impressed.

 

“They’re dreamboats,” Delilah said as she found herself an empty fitting room to check out her costume.

 

Helen mimed vomiting at the comment causing Neil to chuckle and nearly drop the pile of clothing in his arms. Helen dumped a few more pieces on top and declared him done, shooing off his complaints that there were far too many to go through and shoving him into the fitting room next to Delilah’s.

 

It took the better part of an hour before Helen settled on a Peter Pan costume for Neil and declaring that the three of them would all fit the theme, since she was going as Wendy Darling. Delilah complained that Helen just wanted an excuse to leave her house in her pajamas, to which Helen replied that everything was her younger brother’s idea, since he was going as a strung-out college student, and that meant showing up to parties in either his knickers or gross flannels that hadn’t seen a washing machine in three weeks.

 

Helen paid for all of their costumes even though Neil complained that he had his own money. She shushed him and shoved the bag of clothing at him as they got out of the store and headed for the food courts where Delilah proclaimed that shopping for all the costumes and makeup she was going to use tired her out and they needed a Starbucks to perk up.

 

The evening ended with Helen dropping Neil off to the same corner she had probably dropped Kevin off the night of the Metwest game, because Kevin was standing next to a street lamp, with his arms folded over his chest, the glasses of his wire-rims glinting in the street light.

 

“Well, looks like your keeper’s here to pick you up,” Helen said, making a face. “He does know that he’s hot if he wasn’t such a dick to everyone all the time, right?”

 

Neil sighed as he moved to get out of the SUV’s back seat. “Kevin’s just really into the game.”

 

“I think it’s hot,” Delilah declared.

 

“You think everyone’s hot, D,” Helen replied. “Next thing you’ll tell me, even Coach is hot.”

 

Delilah made a face. “No, that’s gross. Now, Mr. Parrish though…”

 

Helen made finger guns, smirking, before turning to Neil. “Richard and I’ll pick you up here tomorrow around 7. Try to tell your dick brother to get the stick out of his ass long enough to chill out at that party, ‘kay?”

 

Neil nodded and waved his goodbyes just as Delilah air-smooched to him from Helen’s side mirror, and he walked up to the sidewalk to join Kevin, who looked pissed, as usual, but not dour enough that Neil thought they were finally okay. He fell into step as Kevin started to walk in the direction of their apartment.

 

“So Helen managed to actually weasel you into buying a costume?” Kevin asked quietly.

 

Neil shrugged as he shifted his school bag on his shoulder and adjusted his grip on the shopping bag of clothes. “It was either accept it or waste her money.”

 

“Mmm,” said Kevin. They walked in silence for a while before Kevin finally couldn’t help himself. “So… strippers, huh?”

 

Neil felt a slow smile washing over his face as he stared up at Kevin, grinning impishly. “Yeah, strippers.”

 

Kevin smiled, his eyes crinkling adorably as he ruffled Neil’s hair. “You’re such an asshole.”

 

“Mmm,” was all Neil said as he slipped his hand into the crook of kevin’s arm, and they walked together into the apartment complex in companionable silence.

 

They were all right, and that was all that Neil really wanted.

 

* * *

 

Joey lived in a trashy-looking mansion in a suburb just outside of downtown Oakland. All of the houses in the subdivision were fancy-looking but there was something off about them, like someone had grand designs for their construction but ran out of budget midway into building them, and the houses ended up looking cheap and poorly constructed. Helen told Neil and Kevin that Joey’s dad had been the developer and contractor of the subdivision, which was why everything looked cheap and trashy, like  prostitute’s nether regions after a nasty bout of syphilis.

 

Richard, Helen’s younger brother, a handsome golden boy in Neil’s grade, looked affronted by the comparison that anything Joey’s family did could be so favorably compared, and he and Helen kept sniping at each other about even bothering to show up to a party hosted by Joey, like Helen hadn’t just strong-armed Neil into joining them, and Richard hadn’t just invited his rich, Catholic school friends to go as well.

 

Neil wasn’t really paying attention because Kevin sat, crowded next to him, in the middle of the SUV’s back seat, and the hand he’d braced on Neil’s left knee was slowly creeping up the inside of his thigh. Neil knew all of this was probably his fault anyway for not thinking things through when he let Helen buy him the stupid clingy green tights that completed the costume. He was sure Kevin had almost blushed when Neil came out of the bathroom dressed like he came out of a Disney blue film. Helen had cackled like a deranged witch when she rolled up to the street corner to pick Neil and Kevin up. Kevin had dressed up as a pirate, so he and Neil were essentially Peter Pan and Captain Hook, if Captain Hook was a little more like a thoroughly soused Jack Sparrow, and Peter Pan wore Hook’s ridiculous red coat because Kevin refused to go out of the apartment with Neil looking like a Halloween streetwalker.

 

Of course, that didn’t stop Kevin from trying to grope him the second they were installed in the back seat of Helen’s SUV. Kevin’s face was studiously blank even has his right hand smoothed over Neil’s thigh, well away from view of the two people sitting up front.

 

He drew Kevin’s coat closer around the green polyester top that was his costume as they alighted the vehicle in the sloping driveway of Joey’s McMansion, to the whistles and catcalls of Joey’s friends. Their host stood in the center of a gaggle of teenage boys, wearing a gray tunic with the front hanging open and low, exposing his skinny pale chest adorned with a tacky bleeding heart fake tattoo and his head sporting a crown of thorns.

 

Helen snorted as soon as she caught sight of Joey. “Let me guess, you’re Porn Star Jesus.”

 

Joey bowed with a flourish as he greeted Kevin and Neil, eyeing Neil salaciously as he huddled in his borrowed coat. “Damn, Twinkie’s hot and all grown up.” Kevin scowled when Joey’s hand made to cop a feel of Neil’s ass.

 

“Hey,” Kevin scowled as the rest of the team sans Andrew came to greet them, and everyone made crude comments of Neil’s legs in those awful tights that left little to the imagination. “You guys touch him and I break your kneecaps next practice.”

 

Blake held his hands up, laughing as he swished his Dracula cloak off his shoulders. “Hey man, just showing some appreciation. Twinkie cleans up good. Someone call Delilah. Looks like we’ve got a full cast of Porn Star Peter Pan out here.”

 

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Neil muttered as Delilah flitted into view in her too-short fairy costume. The sparkly glitter nylon stockings she wore, paired with Helen’s sweetheart pale blue nightgown, Neil’s obnoxious green tights, and Kevin’s ridiculous pirate hat really did make them look like they came from a low budget Playboy photoshoot.

 

“This was your idea,” Kevin intoned as he pushed Neil into the hallway of the mansion.

 

Joey’s house looked just as trashy inside as it did outside, with scuffed pillars painted to look like marble, fancy cherry wood hallway tables overflowing with liquor bottles of all kinds, and half-crumpled red solo cups littering the wall-to-wall carpeted floor. There were about thirty or so people grinding to a loud techno beat in the living room and someone had hung a mobile of animatronics bats in the doorway to the kitchen. The bats shrieked an awful cacophony of ticking sounds that sounded nothing like real bats whenever someone passed under it.

 

“God, this place is disgusting,” Helen groaned as they all found people handing them what looked like used solo cups filled with beer.

 

“Where are the strippers?” Richard demanded. “You told me there would be strippers.”

 

Helen gave her brother a careless wave of her manicured hand. “Before 10pm, people will be drunk enough to strip and dance on the coffee tables without prompting.”

 

Neil inspected a white leather loveseat in the corner of the living room, away from most of the crowd. The couch looked reasonably clean enough for him and Kevin to sit on, as he glanced around for the rest of the team. Reggie, Blake and Ron were dancing with a group of scantily clad costumed girls in the center of the living room. Ivan, dressed as a Ninja Turtle, was hanging off the tacky gold chandelier, and probably breaking the bulbs one by one. Tom had pulled up a chair near where he and Kevin sat and was discussing Exy tactics with Kevin while Kevin drank like a man dying of thirst, though even as he drank and talked in a steadily slurring voice, he kept a firm hand around Neil’s wrist, easily warding away the stray party stragglers who took interest in Neil’s green-colored legs. Delilah and Joey were standing near the kitchen making out noisily, while Helen mixed drinks for her brother and her brother’s friends.

 

It looked like the whole team was in attendance except for Andrew Doe. That was until Neil spied a tuft of blond hair sticking messily up from the crown of an angel’s halo. From behind, Andrew did almost fit the look of a cherubic choir boy, with gigantic feather wings. Neil patted Kevin’s hand on his wrist just as Kevin was drunkenly describing the idea of a good play to Tom, and Kevin let him go. Neil nodded in Andrew’s direction. Kevin was either too soused to notice or too preoccupied in the discussion about Exy.

 

Andrew was, strangely enough, surrounded by Richard’s Catholic school friends and Neil could only surmise that one of Andrew’s previous fosters might have sent him there. He waited for him to excuse himself to go to the kitchen for more drinks before he followed him inside, on the pretext of getting food for himself and Kevin.

 

Andrew barely looked at him as he mixed juice with rum. Neil thought there was something strange in Andrew’s face before he realized what it was: Andrew was smiling, and not that same deranged smirk he’d given Neil when he’d pointed the muzzle of Neil’s gun to his face. This was a tentative smile, the look of someone who didn’t quite know who he was talking to.

 

“Hello,” said Andrew and even his voice sounded the same but not. Like a stranger bumping into another stranger. It was surreal.

 

Neil blinked as he thought it over. “You’re not Andrew.” It was flat, a statement, not a question.

 

Not-Andrew blinked back at him, nearly spilling his rum. “You know, you’re the third person who’s asked me that tonight.” He set his drink on the counter and extended his hand. “My name is Aaron Minyard, I go to Dick’s school.”

 

Neil stared warily at the proffered hand until Aaron finally dropped it, looking at him strangely. “So, does this Andrew really look like me that much?”

 

“N-not really,” he stammered, feeling off kilter at the uncanny resemblance that Aaron bore to their deranged goalkeeper, and yet the expression on his face, the openness in his hazel eyes so different. Neil grabbed a bottle from the counter randomly and picked up a small plate of cheese sticks. “Um, I have to go.”

 

He walked back hurriedly to where Kevin sat, polishing off a line of vodka shots on the chair that Tom had vacated, and tugged Kevin to his feet.

 

“We have to go,” he said as Kevin sloshed the drink to himself and glared at Neil for the wasted shot.

 

“But I haven’t finished my shots,” Kevin whined as he stumbled after Neil.

 

Neil ignored him and started off for the main doors. He wasn’t quite sure why he was panicking. There had to be a perfectly plausible explanation as to why Andrew would have a Catholic school boy doppelganger (maybe he was a long lost brother?) but Neil wasn’t thinking. He remembered Andrew pointing his gun at him, safety flicked off, smiling that deranged smile at him, and he wondered if the presence of that strange clone was a trick, maybe a well-laid plan of his father’s henchmen to ensnare Neil and Kevin…

 

He stopped in his tracks when another costumed form emerged from the darkness beyond the mansion’s sloped driveway and backed up the doorway as Andrew Doe, face stormy and hazel eyes flashing, stomped up to the house, dressed up as Satan. In one hand, he held a black-painted trident, and in the other, a rubber mask of some vaguely reptilian creature.

 

“Doe! Fucking hell!” Joey yelled as he shoved Delilah off his lap to greet Andrew at the doorway, knocking Neil backwards into Kevin’s chest. Kevin swayed and grabbed around Neil’s waist to keep them both from falling over.

 

“Jesus Christ, now this is perfect! You even brought the Jar Jar Binks mask I asked for!” Joey laughed as Andrew tossed him the rubber mask, but Andrew’s attention wasn’t at the party or even at Neil and Kevin, shoved up against the wall together.

 

“I heard I had a clone hanging around here somewhere,” Andrew said, voice flat as he shoved Joey aside and he collided against Neil and Kevin. “Where is he?”

 

“Dude!” Blake and Ron yelled, merging from the throng of bodies using the center of Joey’s living room as a mosh pit.

 

“We thought he was you, man, but he’s just some pansy-assed punk from the Southridge team,” Reggie said as Doe advanced on the small group of Catholic school boys seated at the corner of the living room, near the trashy-looking faux marble staircase that wound up to the upper parts of the mansion.

 

Andrew tapped the boy on the back of his shoulder but didn’t wait for him to turn around before he whipped him around by the unwieldy wings of his costume and punched him on his nose. The other Catholic school boys yelled in shock as Andrew dragged his clone up by the neck of his white choirboy shirt.

 

“I told you to leave me the fuck alone, and you still show your face to this party,” he hissed, shaking Aaron Minyard hard enough for his teeth to rattle. “The next time you show up in Oakland again, I’m going to break every bone in your body, and you can tell that sad excuse of a breeder that popped us out to fuck off. I’m not interested in a brother or a mother!”

 

Andrew shoved Aaron back into his dumbfounded friends and stalked away, passing Joey in the hallway to snatch his rubber mask back. He took a moment to shove the mask over his head, prying the mask’s half-open mouth to shove an unlit cigarette to his lips. He nodded to Neil and Kevin as he passed them by, and disappeared into the Oakland night as the party-goers resumed dancing in the living room mosh pit.

 

“Wow,” said Helen as she appeared next to Neil, who was helping Kevin up from where he had fallen against the wall. “Who knew Catholic school boy Minyard was twin brothers with Sith Lord Jar Jar Binks?”

 

“I’m pretty sure that was Supreme Leader Snoke,” Richard said, adjusting his hipster glasses on the bridge of his nose.

 

Neil had absolutely no idea what they were talking about as he turned to Kevin, who had mostly sobered up after being dog-piled against the wall by all the other people Andrew had shoved to get to his doppelganger. “Come on, we should go.”

 

“Aaand you really probably shouldn’t,” Ron said, appearing from the doorway. “There are no buses that pass through here after midnight and you’ll probably end up getting mugged, especially with Hot Green Legs over there.”

 

Helen jerked a thumb towards the tacky staircase in the living room. “Joe has guest rooms upstairs for you to sleep off your buzz if you really need to. Dick and I can call you when we’re ready to go.”

 

Neil glanced at Kevin to make sure his brother was okay with spending the night in a stranger’s place, and when Kevin shrugged, started for the direction of the stairs. They passed a couple making out on the steps, and Ivan passed out on the landing. Reggie and Delilah were half-naked and making out on the bed of the first room they passed, but the second door was unlocked and the small room was clean and mercifully empty.

 

Kevin hurled himself onto the queen bed in the center of the room with a dull thud, shielding his eyes from the overbright fluorescent light when Neil flipped the switch on. “I don’t understand what the fuck just happened.”

 

Neil sighed, slipping off the obnoxious red pirate coat, toed off his shoes, and helped Kevin out of the fancy costume boots. “I have no idea, and I really don’t care anymore.”

 

He pushed Kevin off to one side of the bed, ignoring the grumbles and complaints and collapsed face first into the pillows. Andrew Doe and his issues weren’t his problem, and everything else in his life, including running from his father’s henchmen, could wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated whether to continue with this chapter for the AO3 post or not because almost everything here is self-indulgent private jokes with nothing really essential to the story I am trying to tell, at least not for this one related to Kevin and Neil. The Andrew and Aaron part was supposed to come to play in another story which I have yet to write. In the end, I figured it didn't really matter since it still fulfilled the purpose of setting the scene for the next chapter.
> 
> Sorry if this part is super weird!


	12. Chapter 12

Neil woke up in the gray hours just before dawn to the phantom feel of knives against his face, threatening to cut his eyes out. He struggled for a minute to force the nightmare down and swim in the darkness of his subconscious to wakefulness before he shot up from the bed, gasping for air. It took another minute to calm his racing heart as he realized that the burning he felt in his eyes was because he’d fallen asleep wearing his contact lenses and it had dried up overnight.

 

He grimaced as he popped them out of his eyes. There was a small plastic framed desk mirror on one of the two end tables flanking the bed and he checked the redness in his eyes for irritation, bracing himself from seeing his reflection without one of the cornerstones of his disguise. 

 

The blue of his irises felt like a punch in the gut as he looked at his father’s eyes blinking back at him in the mirror and he set the mirror back on the table face down, as he reached for the emergency pair of contacts in his wallet. Beside him, Kevin stirred into wakefulness, groaning his protest at the bitch of a hangover he always woke with whenever he had a vodka bender.

 

“Fuck,” Kevin swore, copying Neil’s instinct to peel the shriveled lenses off his eyes. “How long did we sleep?”

 

Neil shrugged. The door to the room they occupied was still closed but there was no more thumping sound of a bass line that had filtered through the crack between the door and the floor. Neil wondered if Helen had forgotten to wake them up to drop them off home. It didn’t really matter. They were both mostly awake now and could manage walking through the subdivision to the nearest bus stop and if there were none, knew how to press their luck to hitch a ride back into the city proper.

 

Once Kevin had peeled the sleep dust from his eyes and replaced his contacts, Neil got up and made for the door. Kevin grabbed his wrist and pulled him close.

 

“Hey,” he whispered, one arm snaking around Neil’s waist. “Are you alright?”

 

“Yeah,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to the crown of Kevin’s head. He knew this was an apology of sorts, for what, he wasn’t quite sure yet. Maybe Kevin was finally realizing he wasn’t the easiest person to get along with when he was hung over. “We should go downstairs to find Helen.”

 

“Yeah,” Kevin said, but instead, he lay back down on the bed, bringing Neil with him.

 

Neil nestled in the protective fold of Kevin’s arms and hummed quietly in contentment. The impersonal feel of Joey’s guest room gave him the impression of running, of spending nights in questionable motel rooms, hiding out in abandoned and condemned buildings, or squatting in foreclosed houses in depressed towns. The past five years had been years of hard living, of skulking in shadows, gun or whatever weapon they could find in hand, the threat of capture always lurking, haunting their heels wherever they went.

 

But Neil’s father was in prison now, and his henchmen had not found Neil or Kevin for many weeks. The quiet lull of peace that Oakland granted them had been everything the two boys had dreamed of since they had gone on the run: a chance to be normal, a shot at life with no threat of death hounding their heels, a slice of a life that should have been a birthright, not a struggle to obtain.

 

He shivered when he felt Kevin’s lips ghosting over the pulse in his neck and sighed with pleasure when a warm hand caressed his side. His eyelids fluttered when the brush of lips became the firm press of a kiss.

 

“Kevin?” he asked, wriggling on top of the larger boy to settle against Kevin’s body more firmly.

 

“Ssh,” Kevin whispered, the ghost of his breath washing moist and warm against the heat rising up in Neil’s neck, fingers tangling in the loose waves of hair at the back of his head. His hair was getting long but Kevin seemed to enjoy playing with and touching his hair and Neil wasn’t complaining when the feel of Kevin’s hands on him gave him goosebumps.

 

He eased up against Kevin’s side, closing his eyes and letting his own hands and lips wander, pressing kisses against Kevin’s jaw and smoothing his fingers through to the sliver of exposed skin of Kevin’s chest where the top buttons of his pirate shirt had come loose.

 

He listened to Kevin’s purr of pleasure, a soft rumble of breath that vibrated deliciously against his own body and Neil was keenly aware of the thin walls, the poor construction of the mcmansion and he shivered again. He could feel Kevin’s fingers creeping under the hem of the polyester tunic of his costume and he raised his head again to look Kevin in the eye.

 

“Kevin? Do you want to…?” Kevin shuddered as Neil punctuated his question with the slow drag of his hips against Kevin’s.

 

“Fuck,” Kevin cursed quietly. “Yes.”

 

Kevin rolled on the bed, bringing Neil to lie on the rumpled sheets, and him hovering just above Neil and kissed him soundly as deft fingers worked on the slim belt that kept Neil’s Peter Pan tunic together, ripping that off, and then pushing the shirt open and down Neil’s shoulders, enough to expose his chest and stomach but not enough that it trapped his arms in a tangle of fabric as his mouth and tongue worshipped Neil’s scars with dizzying intent. Neil groaned and blushed all the way to his chest as he realized whoever else was in the rooms down the hall could probably hear him and he made to cover his mouth, but his arms and hands were caught the sleeves of the shirt trapped beneath his and Kevin’s combined weight. He opened his mouth to ask Kevin to help get the shirt off but Kevin instead shoved two long fingers into his mouth to keep him quiet as he peeled off Neil’s obnoxious green tights with one hand, freeing Neil’s half-hard arousal.

 

Neil moaned sensually around Kevin’s fingers as Kevin’s warm breath ghosted over his cock, sending tingles up and down his spine. Kevin’s gaze was intense on his flushed body and his fingers pressed on Neil’s tongue as he bent low to lick a hot stripe up Neil’s rapidly thickening cock from base to tip, eliciting another helpless whimper from Neil before Neil thought to wrap his mouth around Kevin’s fingers at the same time Kevin’s mouth wrapped around his cock.

 

Neil struggled for breath as Kevin began to suck him in earnest. His world seemed to narrow down to Kevin’s fingers in his mouth, his lips and tongue worshipping his cock, the obscene slurping noises Kevin made as he licked and sucked and kissed Neil for all he was worth. He struggled to crane his neck down to see but Kevin’s arm pinned him to the mattress, his fingers thrusting down Neil’s mouth to keep the mewling sounds that threatened to fill the room and spill into the poor acoustics of the mcmansion.  He was only dimly aware of Kevin’s other hand fumbling clumsily to peel the tights off the quivering muscles of his thighs and tug them completely off, and then one strong arm was hooking under his right knee, pushing his leg up to his chest.

 

Then Kevin was pulling off from his cock, and Neil would have cried in protest even as Kevin slid his fingers from Neil’s mouth.

 

“Ssh,” Kevin whispered, and then mouthed at Neil’s balls and Neil had to bring his own hand to his mouth to muffle the utterly debauched sound that ripped through his throat.

 

“Hush,” Kevin said again and Neil looked down at his desire-clouded gaze, his red, spit-slicked lips millimeters from Neil’s aching flesh, a thin trail of saliva still connecting his mouth to the base of Neil’s cock. “I want to try something, okay?”

 

Neil nodded frantically, hoping fervently that whatever it was Kevin wanted to do involved having his mouth on Neil’s body again and he gasped and twitched when he felt something warm and wet touch his opening. Kevin’s fingers, the one Neil had been sucking on just moments earlier, fluttered and teased around the puckered skin of his hole. Neil shuddered at the foreign sensation evoking a different kind of heat spreading from his belly as Kevin hitched his other leg up his shoulder.

 

“I’m going to finger you, Neil,” Kevin whispered and his finger swirled again on Neil’s body, making his skin crawl with sensation. “Is that okay?”

 

“Yeah,” he answered and his voice cracked so he repeated, “yeah.”

 

“Try to keep quiet,” Kevin said wryly, the corner of his lips turning up as Neil struggled to swallow his moans as Kevin teased one slick finger into him.

 

The sensation felt strange and utterly foreign. Neil had never been touched the way Kevin had touched him, but this was a completely different experience to having his dick shoved down someone else’s throat. He opened his mouth to start asking Kevin but Kevin’s finger worked slowly and gently into his opening, slicking him up with saliva and caressing his inner walls. He felt his stomach jump as Kevin’s other hand grasped his cock again, stroking him slowly, in time with the honey-drip movement of his finger questing up into Neil’s body.

 

“Kev--” he started to say but Kevin’s name broke off into a strangled moan as he felt Kevin’s finger touch something inside him that lit fireworks up his nerve-endings and making his cock, that had started to soften at the strange intrusion up his ass, go rigid at full mast.

 

“Oh God,” he whimpered as Kevin touched him again at the same spot, other finger curling and pushing up against his hole. Kevin let go of his cock and licked up his balls then spat at the base of his fingers disappearing into Neil’s body and everything was slicker, tighter, his dick twitching, muscles clenched as the sensation of Kevin’s fingers slowly thrusting up into him and hitting that spot unerringly brought him dangerously close to release.

 

Kevin watched him quiver and shudder with intent, half-lidded eyes. “Do you think you can finish just from this?”

 

Neil flushed darkly. His whole body felt like he was on fire and he wasn’t sure that Kevin wasn’t trying to kill him. “I… yes, I think.” He swallowed a groan as Kevin’s fingers scissored inside him. “You can go faster.”

 

Kevin did, his fingers pistoning a harsh staccato rhythm of pleasure, pulling back, caressing, pushing into Neil’s prostate. Every few thrusts, he would spit on his fingers again to keep the passage slick. The strangeness had all but faded, replaced by a burning tingle of the stretch to his hole and the sharp pinpricks of sensation that threatened to make him go cross-eyed with pleasure.

 

His orgasm approached him like freight trains colliding on the same track, exploding in a shower of sparks in his extremities, and come spurting on his chest and stomach. Kevin’s unoccupied hand moved to pump him through his release, his eyes wide and dark as he watched Neil thrash through his orgasm, mouth open in a silent scream. When it was over, Neil’s entire body tingled and he gasped as Kevin pulled his fingers out of him.

 

“Holy fuck,” Kevin whispered reverently, moving up the bed where Neil lay, trying to catch his breath.

 

Neil felt weak and utterly spent, unable to even lift his head up to kiss Kevin, so Kevin bent over and kissed him soundly instead, before pulling a corner of the duvet to wipe his hand and clean up Neil’s body tenderly, even as Neil lay there, still shivering through the aftershocks.

 

“What was that?” Neil whispered when he finally caught his breath. His legs were still quivering as he attempted to lever himself up, watching with a lazy, half-focused gaze as Kevin struggled to remove the sash of his costume, and free his dick from the constraints of his trousers and boxer briefs.

 

He watched as Kevin stroked himself hard and fast, trying to chase his orgasm. Neil batted Kevin’s hand away and leaned down, opening his mouth to let Kevin thrust up his throat, gagging with discomfort as Kevin pushed his head down and his hips up, but determined to give back the same intensity with which Kevin had made him come. He moaned around the weight of Kevin’s dick in his mouth and went pliant as Kevin thrust up once, twice, and then warm come spilled on his tongue, shot up to the back of his throat.

 

Neil choked when it became too much and Kevin dragged him away to finish coming on his stomach. Neil bent down and licked off the come that spilled on Kevin’s skin and smiled, slow and filthy when Kevin reached forward to wipe the trail of come that leaked out of the corner of his lips with his thumb before they collapsed against each other, finally sated.

 

“Fuck,” Kevin breathed as he held Neil close, pressing kisses on Neil’s forehead and temples and brushing sweat-damp curls away from his eyes. “That was amazing.”

 

“Mm,” Neil agreed, nestling contentedly against Kevin’s chest, nuzzling against the sweat cooling on tan skin.

 

They lay together, basking in the cocoon of afterglow for long moments, before sitting up and retrieving their discarded clothing. Kevin tucked himself back into his pants. It was a bit more work getting Neil into his underwear and tights, his legs were so shaky and refused to follow simple motor commands his brain gave, like stand straight or bend over without falling all over Kevin. Kevin helped him get dressed and finger-combed his hair back into a semblance of normality.

 

Once Kevin was satisfied that Neil no longer looked like he had his soul fucked out of him, they finally dared to step out of the room.

 

The mansion was completely and utterly trashed. There were crumpled solo cups everywhere, little puddles of beer drying on the wooden floor of the upstairs hallway. Ivan was still passed out on the stair landing and the living room looked like a war zone of scattered discarded food and stomped over throw pillows littering the carpet, half naked boys sprawled on the floor. Neil recognized them as Ron, Blake and Tom, still sleeping off their hangovers, and he wondered if, by sun up, parents would come knocking down Joey’s door to pick up their wasted children.

 

Joey himself was sprawled on the white loveseat, nursing a coffee and a cigarette, his bleeding heart fake tattoo ripped with little cracks on his smudged skin. Helen sat at a table with her own coffee, hiding the evidence of her hangover with giant white plastic-rimmed sunglasses, while her younger brother dozed beside her.

 

She cocked an eyebrow at Neil and Kevin’s mostly put together appearance. “Ugh, I hate that you two aren’t completely smashed like the rest of us.”

 

“Reggie’s got the coffee going, if he and Delilah haven’t started macking again in the kitchen,” Joey supplied as Neil and Kevin stepped around the sleeping bodies on the floor to make their way to the kitchen.

 

Delilah sat at the breakfast counter, wearing a silk robe, while Reggie poured out another two mugs of steaming caffeine and handed them to Neil who drank his black. Kevin took his own mug and dumped cream into his and the two of them walked back to the living room.

 

“So, my mom’s sending a driver here because I’m too wasted to drive,” Helen declared. “Should be here in another few.” She turned to Joey, who flicked ash from his cigarette into a sleeping Blake’s hair. “You sure your parents aren’t going to completely skewer you with the sight of this dump?”

 

Joey snorted. “Are you kidding me? This place looks cleaner now than before the party started.” He nodded to Neil and Kevin, who found themselves a quiet corner to sit and drink their coffee. “You two good?”

 

“Hm?” Kevin asked, the corner of his lips twitching up. Neil settled just a bit closer, leaning his head against Kevin’s arm, and studiously ignoring everyone in favor of enjoying his coffee, and maybe the way Kevin’s hand was spread flat on the small of his back, away from everyone’s view. “Yeah, we’re good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll come out and admit it: I wrote the whole party scene so I could write smut right after. I love me some purple prose.


	13. Chapter 13

The weeks passed without incident. The team won two more games in November: one with Far West and another with Oakland High School. The last game they had before the semester break for Christmas was with Southridge and while most of the team were busy with midterm reviews, Neil was too concerned with the reduced hours of practice. The team had improved by leaps and bounds and whatever strange issue Andrew seemed to have against Kevin and Neil all but forgotten. The goalkeeper had not said a word to either of them since that strange incident with his twin brother during Halloween.

 

Of course, Neil wasn’t sure either how well the Southridge game would go. He remembered Reggie saying that Andrew’s brother played for that team. But Andrew went about practice as if he didn’t care at all and no one, not even Delilah, deigned to mention anything about his brother.

 

Neil didn’t want to dwell too deeply on the relative quiet of the passing weeks. He and Kevin happily kept to themselves after the Halloween party, and the team once again got used to their reluctance in joining social gatherings. Nobody bothered them on Thanksgiving weekend, even though Helen had asked him a few times if their parents were coming back from overseas to spend the holidays with them. Neil lied through his teeth and told her his mother was flying them to London for the four-day long holiday, and he and Kevin spent the weekend making out in bed. By the end of that weekend, Kevin had already moved his bed next to Neil’s so the two of them could sleep wrapped in each other’s arms after endless hours of kissing and occasionally something more.

 

He felt his cheeks heat up at the memory of the holiday weekend, of him lying naked in bed, Kevin hovering over him, touching his body and telling him he was beautiful, not despite of his scars but because of them. Neil wasn’t vain, far from it, but he was immensely self-conscious of the battle zone of scars that littered his body, the sight of his mangled flesh reminded him of his weakest moments, a child unable to protect himself from an abusive parent, a child who had to face death down too many times in his too-short life. Kevin’s whispered compliments and quiet touches went a long way in helping Neil make peace with his past.

 

It all came crashing down on the day of the Southridge game.

 

Because Southridge Academy was a private school, it boasted a fancier Exy court than the makeshift one built in the Bloomfield soccer field, so the game was to be held in the Southridge campus in San Jose. At 4pm on Friday, the team were excused from their classes and filed into the bus, and pushed off on the forty-five minute ride to San Jose.

 

Conversation in the bus was stilted and quiet as Neil and Kevin privately discussed their game tactics, while the rest of the team talked about the upcoming Christmas break. No one tried to talk to Andrew Doe, sitting alone at the very back of the bus, and Neil glanced at him once, wondering at the kind of loneliness one must endure to be so completely and utterly friendless that he would forego the company of even his real brother and mother. At least Neil had Kevin, and even at his most alone when his mother had died, Kevin had never once turned him away.

 

Southridge Academy was a behemoth of a private Catholic school. Set in beautiful hilly suburbia ten minutes from the San Jose city proper, it was home to approximately five thousand overly rich, privileged boys of the sort that had politicians and movie stars for fathers, and air-headed socialites for mothers. Because it was a little ways away from the main part of the city, Southridge offered dormitories to its students. Neil learned from Helen that her brother stayed at the on-campus dorms and the close proximity of dorm to courts was how the school team honed players of the caliber recruited by Class 1 college Exy teams.

 

It was Coach Alejo’s first announcement once the Tigers were changed out and ready for warmups.

 

“We all know Southridge attracts all of the best team scouts. This year is also the final year of their current captain, so I expect there will be a fair number of scouts in the audience wanting to sign a Lynch to their team.” Coach looked around at his team as if everyone knew just who he was talking about, and nodded even though Kevin and Neil just shrugged at each other. The name had no recall. Coach continued:

 

“With so many team scouts here, I want everyone to be doing their damned hardest to put you in these schools’ radars. This game, probably aside from Amador High, is going to be your ticket to college.”

 

Most of everyone nodded except Helen and Joey, whose families were rich enough to send their children to private universities without the need for a sports scholarship. Neil wasn’t really paying attention. Coach’s mention of Class 1 Exy teams really had him looking for the presence of one team’s recruiter in particular and he wasn’t quite sure Riko Moriyama was the kind that would bother hobnobbing with the other casual fans of high school Exy long enough to watch a game.

 

He was relieved not to see anyone standing out in the crowd in all black. The bleacher seats were filled mostly with students in the obnoxious Southridge school uniform, though there was already a smattering of teenagers in casual clothes, dressed in the Bloomfield school colors, that was starting to trickle in. He spotted a few coaches from Berkeley, USC, and as far out as Penn State, easily telling them apart from the other smartly dressed adults, parents of the Southridge team’s players, by their officious looking folders and clipboards as they surveyed the Southridge team already on the court for warmups.

 

Reggie took the Tigers through a few laps around the half court granted to the visiting team before they broke for drills. Just beside Neil, Delilah perked up and nodded in the direction of a gaggle of adults milling about in the stands.

 

“Shit’s about to go down, guys,” she announced.

 

Neil followed her stare to find the mousy-haired woman he remembered had been with Andrew at the bus terminal, and the tall well-built army guy that had tried to talk to him. So Andrew’s foster mother and brother were in attendance, and they appeared to be talking to a small blond woman and a tall, reedy, severe-looking man. The woman bore the most uncanny resemblance to Andrew.

 

“Ooh, drama!” Blake singsonged in an annoying falsetto.

 

“So, Doe, you think you’ll be going to awkward family dinners anytime soon?” Joey asked snidely, even as Helen elbowed him to shut the fuck up.

 

Neil hazarded a glance at Andrew, but apart from narrowing his eyes in suspicion, the goalkeeper kept his face carefully neutral.

 

Blake, Ron and Joey made a few more crude jokes about the presence of Andrew’s fosters and what were probably his real parents as Reggie joined the Southridge captain, a giant of a man with strikingly handsome features, for the starting serve coin toss. Kevin nodded at Neil in the direction of the Southridge team, where there were two other boys, just as tall if not taller than the captain, stretching indolently while joking and laughing with each other.

 

“They’re the ones to watch,” he intoned as Neil fitted on his gloves and strapped his helmet.

 

“The Lynch brothers,” Helen supplied, coming to stand between them. “Captain is Declan Lynch. I made state debate championships against him. He’s their starting striker. The bald one on the benches is middle brother, Ronan. He’s in Dick’s grade, and I’m pretty sure is also one of their starting backliners. Blond kid beside him is Matthew Lynch, freshman and already a mean-ass goalkeeper. They’re the reason all these fancy Class 1 schools are watching this game.”

 

“What do they eat to make them grow that tall, I wonder,” Tom said.

 

“Mario mushrooms,” Blake guessed.

 

“Protein shakes made of aborted babies,” Ron supplied and grinned when Helen scowled at him. “What? You can’t tell me the Lynch kids aren’t doing at least something illegal. You don’t grow that tall and hot from eating kale and grass.”

 

“Kevin does,” Delilah said with a cheeky grin that Kevin completely ignored.

 

Neil looked up at Kevin. “They’re all going after you.”

 

Kevin’s eyes seemed to glow with a fierce light. “Keep it that way. Lynch looks like he could break every bone in your body and then some.”

 

Neil smirked. That may be true within the most basic rules of Exy but Neil Josten wasn’t the son of the Butcher of Baltimore for nothing. “They can try.”

 

Kevin only smiled at him furtively as he, Andrew, Ron, Blake, and Ivan went to join Reggie on the court for first serve.

 

The game got underway and right away, Neil could see what Kevin meant. Although the three brothers lorded over different sections of the court, their gameplay was flawless. Ronan Lynch easily stole the ball from Reggie, passed in goal to Matthew, who served it downcourt to Declan. Blake and Ivan had nothing on who was apparently Southridge’s star striker, and he got past them easily enough. Andrew was the team’s last line of defense but with his foster and real parents in the stands, Neil wasn’t sure the goalkeeper would be in his right mind to--

 

Andrew swung his racquet and the ball flew upcourt. Kevin gunned after it, Ronan Lynch barely half a step behind him. Kevin caught the ball but Lynch was an unstoppable natural disaster unfolding. The two boys crashed into the wall in a heap of limbs. Fists were flying before either boy was on their feet. Coach was yelling before the scene devolved into another brawl like the Skyline game. They were barely fifteen minutes into the first half.

 

Five players were given yellow cards because no one knew who threw the first punch. Coach pulled Reggie out, he and Kevin had been easily dogpiled once the two towering Lynch brothers sans the one in goal, had joined the fray. Reggie was smaller than Kevin and had probably never survived getting shot at, knifed or had the living shit beaten out of him by professional hired killers and was sporting a limp by the time he passed Neil on his way to the bench.

 

“Asshole fucking elbowed me on the neck,” he heard him rasp in complaint before the court doors closed.

 

Neil jogged towards Kevin, looking him over for signs of injury. Kevin shook his head curtly and waved him away. There was time later to lick their wounds and prod their bruises, but not when they were on the court.

 

The game resumed with neither team giving the other ground. Kevin and Neil ran themselves ragged trying to get around the two Lynch brothers in defense, Kevin succeeding in pulling goals through sheer determination to be the best, Neil running distraction on the backliner Lynch so Kevin could score. Downcourt, their own backliners struggled against Declan and the only thing that evened the score was Andrew in goal. But Andrew’s attention span was waning. After the fight between Kevin and Lynch, his twin was subbed in and Andrew didn’t even bother tossing back his saves upcourt. Ron struggled to get the ball from home court to the offense. At halftime, the score was an abysmal two to three in the Southridge favor.

 

Kevin was fuming and hurling curses at the defense before they even got to their bench. His face was bruised and his lower lip split, probably from biting them in pain, the result of the oncourt brawl and too many hits of Lynch’s racquet to his helmet to be considered accidental. Neil wasn’t in any better shape: Minyard marked him and he was just as short as Andrew and not as built as any of the Lynch brothers, but he was just as brutal, and if Neil hadn’t sacrificed so many school nights practicing with Kevin, he wasn’t sure he would have gotten away with anything less than a concussion.

 

Kevin hadn’t paused for breath in his tirade when Andrew simply got up, pulled his helmet off and left in the direction where the team had seen his foster parents. Kevin would have tried to hold him back but Joey, funnily enough, was the one who told him to leave Doe alone. They watched in silence for a while as Andrew left to talk to his fosters but he seemed to ignore them and turned his face his real parents, drawing them away from the crowd and, subsequently, the team’s view.

 

Reggie sighed as he watched Andrew disappear from the stands. “Well, I guess that’s that. Tom, looks like you gotta play the full second half.”

 

“Good luck, man,” Blake panted in between gulps of water. “Lynch is a fucking monster. Asshole doesn’t hold back on illegal checks. At least playing with Kevin gives you a chance at survival.”

 

“I try not to break any bones during practice,” Kevin answered dryly, and went back to bickering with Ron about his failure to get him the ball.

 

Neil frowned, still scanning the stands for Andrew to see if he would come back, when he spotted two figures dressed in identical black suits striding out of the dark tunnels that led to the Southridge home team locker rooms. He thought…

 

“Kevin.”

 

Kevin stopped talking and looked at him strangely. Neil blinked. The two men in suits were looking straight at them. Kevin suddenly stood stock still,  color draining from his face as he spotted the dark marks on each of the young men’s left cheek. Delilah, who had been standing next to him, followed the direction of his gaze and squealed.

 

Riko Moriyama had finally shown up to one of their games and Neil didn’t know what to do.

 

* * *

 

They lost the game to Southridge at seven-five. It wasn’t that big of a stretch to imagine they would lose. A few minutes into second half, Joey and Delilah did not stand a chance against Lynch and his squad of giant strikers, and Tom wasn’t a good enough goalkeeper to handle them with the backliners struggling. Andrew came back to play in the last few minutes but it was too late for the Tigers by then. Kevin was distracted and missed what should have been easy shots when the Lynch defense was finally swapped out, and Neil had completely run himself ragged trying to keep the Southridge backliners from completely mowing Kevin down. 

 

Coach gave a rousing speech about how this one setback wouldn’t end their season and that the numbers they’d racked up in previous wins would ensure they made it to district play-offs in spring. Andrew disappeared again after the game and Neil thought he spotted his estranged twin talking to his fosters. Everyone assumed Doe had just gone to either catch a ride with his fosters or gone to manage family drama with his real parents. Neil had the sinking feeling when he spied Doe again, this time with his twin and his real mother, that it was probably more complicated than that, but he had no time to swell because by the time they got back on the bus, Kevin was a twitching, anxious wreck.

 

Neil wasn’t sure how to assuage the jumbled mix of worry, fear and what he was afraid to acknowledge may be growing excitement that was in Kevin’s whispered “What if he’s recognized us?”

 

He didn’t know how Kevin had grown up with Riko. In all of their years together, Kevin had never once mentioned how his life at the Nest had been before Mary cruelly uprooted him out of West Virginia and plunged him in the nightmare that had been their lives since the three of them ran. Logically, Neil knew it might not have been  good childhood if his mother saw fit to steal the other boy away from his home and his legal guardian, but what if she had been wrong and Kevin hadn’t truly wanted to leave Castle Evermore? Neil wasn’t sure that devastation that would follow if Kevin left him to go back to Edgar Allan with Riko was something he could ever overcome. Without Mary to provide guidance and protection, Neil had become totally dependent on Kevin’s presence to steady him on the path of survival, instead of simply lying helpless and letting his father’s men take him back to Baltimore.

 

“He was too far away to see us,” Neil replied quietly, mindful of the prying ears of his teammates three rows from where they sat at the back of the bus. “He was only at the game during halftime. I didn’t see him in the stands after that.”

 

“He would have seen us lose,” Kevin said.

 

“It doesn’t matter if he didn’t recognize us.”

 

In the twinkle of the dwindling city lights as their bus sped away from San Jose, Kevin’s eyes were hollow and dead. “You don’t know that.”

 

They lapsed into a frigid silence for the rest of the ride back to Oakland, Kevin staring out into the dazzle of lights of the California highway that stretched endlessly, and Neil staring with a growing dread filling his heart at the way the flash of lights of passing vehicles illuminated the hard angles of Kevin’s face before shrouding them back in suffocating darkness.

 

Kevin remained silent on the walk back from school to their apartment, ignoring Neil’s questioning glance if he was alright up until the door of the apartment finally closed behind them, and they were alone in the closest thing to a home either of them had known in many long years. Kevin set his bag wordlessly on the floor and sat at the miserably mismatched dining table of their apartment.

 

“He was my brother, Neil.”

 

Neil looked up. Kevin sat, staring off at nothing in particular. He sighed and put away their things before coming to stand across Kevin.

 

“Tell me the truth: do you want to go back?”

 

Neil feared the silence that stretched between them. Every time he’d asked the question, Kevin had been closed off, distant, and then angry that Neil would bring it up. He didn’t know what had happened to Kevin at Castle Evermore when his mother had died and left him there, but if Kevin truly wanted to go back, if Neil’s mother had only deprived Kevin of a future instead of guaranteeing his survival by stealing him away, Neil wasn’t going to stop him from trying to catch Riko’s attention the next time he showed up at one of their games.

 

Kevin’s eyes seemed to cloud with something Neil couldn’t name as he looked up. “I… don’t know.” He sighed and turned away. “When my mom died and left me there, I didn’t know if I was angry or relieved that she at least thought to leave me with someone who had a child they cared for. I thought, at least, I wouldn’t have to grow up alone with the Master. I had Riko with me.”

 

Neil blinked at Kevin’s sudden willingness to volunteer information about his childhood that he and Mary had kept quiet and secret from Neil for so many years.

 

The story was this: once upon a time, Kayleigh Day discovered she was ill and decided to leave her eight year old child to her college friend and confidant, Tetsuji Moriyama, who was the coach of the premier college Exy Team, the Edgar Allan Ravens. Tetsuji was the guardian of the second born child of his brother, a Japanese businessman, Kengo Moriyama. Riko was as obsessed with Exy as Kevin had been from a very young age. After all, Kevin’s mother and Riko’s uncle were the founders of the sport. From a very young age, the two boys, Riko hungry for his father’s attention, and Kevin grieving for his dead mother and looking for a way to honor her memory by excelling in the sport she helped bring to life, learned and played obsessively with Tetsuji’s team.

 

This, Neil knew from the legend of the two boys’ upbringing as spotlighted in sports media. Riko and Kevin were numbers 1 and 2, the Exy darlings of the Ravens, their unofficial mascots, and as they grew older and more skilled in the sport, their unofficial team members. Neil remembered how they were that fateful summer day when Mary first brought Neil to Castle Evermore to play with them. Neil had been eight, Riko and Kevin, eleven years old. Even back then, they’d been 1 and 2, the numbers drawn on their left cheekbones with Sharpies, before they donned their helmets and scrimmaged with Neil. That day had all gone to shit, when during a break in their play, the three boys were called to one of the conference rooms surrounding the Raven court, and Neil’s father was there to kill and dismember some unnamed man.

 

Neil had wondered many times since that day how Riko and Kevin could watch the gory spectacle without so much as flinching as blood spurted from hacked off limbs. Now Kevin told him: the Moriyamas weren’t a normal family of Japanese businessmen. They were involved in shady deals that required not only hired muscle for protection, but ruthless, methodical murder of the sort the Butcher of Baltimore was renown. And murder wasn’t the only business the Moriyamas were embroiled in.

 

“He was my brother… and he was my owner,” Kevin said, his voice hollow with remembered terror, eyes glassy with fear, knuckles white from the tightness of his clenched fists. “Mom left me with the Master and he turned by upbringing into a business proposal. Riko and I were to make Court and earn money that the Moriyamas invested in my upkeep in our future careers.”

 

Neil opened his mouth and shut it when he realized there was nothing he could say to make Kevin feel better at being trafficked to the mafia at such a tender age. His father may have been abusive and his mother, stern and unloving, but they had not sold him off like he was a piece of meat to be profited from by shady businessmen.

 

“Does Riko know this? That you’re… property?”

 

Kevin raised his haunted eyes at him. “Yes. I wouldn’t say I’m property, not like…” He shook his head. “The Master didn’t really have time for me and my anger and my grief when mom died. So he gave me to Riko.”

 

Neil felt cold at the revelation. “You were his… pet?” Kevin didn’t say anything but Neil knew when he was right and the slight tremor in Kevin’s tight fists on the table made bile rise up his throat. “Did he… did he hurt you?”

 

Kevin stared up at the ceiling. Neil had the distinct feeling that Kevin was willing himself not to cry. “Sometimes, he brought the knives out when I scored higher in our scrimmages. He’d never used them on me, but…”

 

Neil knew exactly what it felt like to be constantly threatened at knifepoint  when he never performed as well as his father, or one of his deranged henchmen that taught Neil how to handle knives, expected.

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, reaching across the table, cupping Kevin’s fists in his smaller hands, bringing them to his face to kiss his pale knuckles tenderly. Kevin wasn’t telling him everything. Neil knew he was conflicted at the loss of the chance to play for the US Court someday, to have a future to begin with, to be Kevin Day and not just a nameless, faceless teenager with an unholy obsession with playing Exy and being the best at it, but he also knew what Kevin was trying to say: that if he had a choice, he would never go back.

 

Kevin looked him in the eye, his gaze full of the same terror Neil constantly felt suffocating him in his waking moments since he and his mother first ran. “Don’t let him take me from you.”

 

He stood and rounded the table, folding his arms around Kevin, pressing a slow kiss to the furrow in his brows. “I won’t. We’ll die before Riko can tear us apart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got sick and broke my one chapter a day typing, but well. Here's some actual plot development?
> 
> Side note: Declan Lynch as a Raven, anyone? (Omfg so all over that!)


	14. Chapter 14

Practice ended on the last day of classes far too early for Neil’s liking. It was barely sundown and he was still buzzing with a restless energy, but most of his teammates already had plans to spend time with their families to prepare for Christmas, or in Helen’s case, prepare for a flight to Washington DC, where her family was originally from, to host Christmas banquets for her mother’s upcoming candidacy.

 

Their teammates had asked Neil and Kevin about their holiday plans like they had during Thanksgiving, and they’d lied and said their parents would finally be in town to spend Christmas with them in America. In truth, the two of them were starting to make plans to run again as soon as Kevin finished high school. They had stayed in Oakland already for longer than they’ve ever dared without Neil’s mother, and were starting to chafe at the familiarity of the city, especially after they’d seen Riko at one of their games. It would be easier to slip overseas once Kevin had graduated because then it would be more believable that he was just a young man looking for his fortune in the world, with a little brother to feed and care for.

 

Neil hadn’t realized how relieved he truly was that Kevin wanted to stay with him, running, rather than going back to his bright future in Castle Evermore, until Kevin actually proposed they leave California the minute he got his diploma. Since Riko’s appearance, Neil had been plagued with nightmares of Kevin choosing to leave with Riko willingly in spite of the threat of torture than stay with Neil to run, to stay unknown, to continue being a ghost, to be hunted like dogs by Neil’s father. He’d lain awake and shivering and staring off in the dark far longer  at those nightmares than even the ones he’d had of his mother’s death or the torture his father had subjected him in his childhood, until Kevin rolled over in bed and snaked an arm around him and complained that Neil was keeping him up before kissing him senseless.

 

He was still waiting for the last of the team to file out of the locker room so he could finally shower alone with just Kevin watching his back, when Coach Alejo showed up in the locker rooms.

 

“Josten.” Neil and Kevin both stood. Coach frowned and pointed at Kevin. “The older one, though I guess Neil could probably come too. There’s someone to see you.”

 

Neil stood and preceded Kevin to the door. Since their first resounding win against Metwest, Coach Alejo had been calling Kevin to field calls from talent scouts of various college coaches from NCAA Class 1 Teams. USC had already called Kevin within the week of the Metwest game, followed  by Breckenridge, University of Texas, and Binghamton. Kevin had told them all he would think about it, but he and Neil knew it wouldn’t be possible for Kevin to play NCAA Class 1 on the off chance that they might eventually have to face off with the Ravens and Kevin would be recognized for who he truly was.

 

After the Southridge game, there was no more question that Kevin wouldn’t be able to take any of these offers. He and Neil were going to run and that was going to be it. Neil knew Kevin privately regretted all the missed opportunities for a future playing Exy but they couldn’t chance Kevin being recognized and taken back to Castle Evermore anymore.

 

This was the first time a talent scout or coach had actually shown up to Bloomfield instead of calling Coach for a phone interview first, and Neil was half-afraid it was a Moriyama come to drag Kevin away in chains.

 

The man in Coach’s office looked nothing like the sort of people the Moriyamas kept in their employ, with the angry black tribal tattoos snaking down his tan arms from the sleeves of his gray seventies punk band t-shirt and the generally unkempt way his scruffy five o’clock shadow made him look. Neil scowled suspiciously, stopping at the door to the office, causing Kevin to bump into him from behind. The man turned from Coach Alejo’s desk, extending his hand at Neil, who stared down at it rudely until he dropped it.

 

“Coach David Wymack from the Palmet--”

 

“I know who you are,” Neil said, still scowling, holding Kevin back behind him.

 

“Really,” Wymack said, picking up the folder he’d set on Coach Alejo’s desk. “Then you know what I’m here for.”

 

“Kevin’s not interested,” Neil replied brusquely. “He’s heard better offers than your team of pathetic Class 1 rejects.”

 

“Neil!” Coach Alejo all but shouted, mortified at Neil’s uncharacteristic rudeness. He knew the Josten brothers were a reclusive, antisocial pair, but Neil and Kevin had been mostly polite when dealing with adults, especially adults who were offering Kevin a chance at a college future.

 

“Coach, Neil is right,” Kevin interrupted smoothly. “I’ve almost made a decision on the USC offer already and I don’t want to leave California with Neil still here. I’m not uprooting my brother just to have him move across the country so I can play college Exy.” He inclined his head at Coach Wymack. “I’m sorry, Coach. I know you had to fly in from South Carolina just to see me, but as you can see, I can’t leave California. I’m all my brother has.”

 

Coach Alejo frowned at the quick dismissal and started to say something about Kevin keeping his options open, but Coach Wymack stopped him. “Coach, could I have some time to discuss this privately with Mr. Josten, please?”

 

“Neil, you should--”

 

“Oh, I’d prefer he’d stay since he obviously figures in Kevin’s decision-making very strongly.”

 

Coach Alejo looked between Wymack and Neil and Kevin once and nodded. “I’ll be at the equipment room.”

 

Once the door was firmly closed, Wymack turned a shrewd eye to the brothers. “Look, I understand this may seem like a lot to take in, but your coach called me for this today. He was concerned neither of your parents have shown up to any of your games despite the immense positive attention your team has garnered since the two of you joined. You also never got back to any of the other schools that tried to recruit you, even though you agreed to talk to your parents and get back to them within the week they called.”

 

Kevin shrugged, grabbing Neil when Neil looked like he was about to say something rude again. “I’m sorry, Coach, but I hardly think that is any of your business. Maybe our parents just really don’t want me to pursue an Exy career.”

 

Wymack snorted. “Do you really believe that? No, you don’t need to answer. I just want you to hear what I’m offering you: a chance to continue playing beyond your high school career, and a chance for your brother once he finishes.”

 

Kevin and Neil exchanged glances. This was the first time anyone had offered them to stay together. Everyone else had assumed Kevin would decide on his future, and his younger brother would stay in Oakland until it was his turn to graduate. Neil gripped Kevin’s wrist, knowing the temptation may be too great for Kevin to resist.

 

Kevin eyed Wymack warily and Neil was drawn to the way that Wymack’s eyes flicked to their joined hands before looking back at Kevin expectantly.

 

“If I take this offer,” Kevin said carefully, “I need to be able to take my brother with me.”

 

“He hasn’t finished high school,” Wymack said, stating the obvious.

 

Kevin looked at him impatiently. “I don’t care. Find a way for me to be able to take Neil and I’m all yours.”

 

Neil gaped at Kevin incredulously. “Kevin, you can’t--”

 

“Hush,” Kevin said, folding his hand over Neil’s and lacing their fingers together as he looked at Wymack expectantly. “This is the only way you’ll get me and, I’m sure you realize, the only way I’ll ever sign on any team. It’s both of us or nothing at all.”

 

Wymack nodded solemnly. “I’ll try to figure something out. I can’t promise he’ll be living with you since Fox Tower is athletes only, but we should be able to find something for him.”

 

Kevin held his hand out and Wymack gave him the folder containing the contracts. “You tell me when you do and we’ll sign. Not a moment sooner.”

 

Wymack hummed his assent and Kevin started to drag Neil out of the office, perhaps wanting to avoid Wymack witnessing the fallout of his decision, but Wymack stopped him.

 

“Josten?” Kevin looked back at the man who had just offered him his future, offered him his life back. “I mean the younger.”

 

Neil scowled at them both, annoyed that Wymack had read his hesitation. “Why are you doing this for us?”

 

Wymack didn’t hesitate in his reply. “Because I believe kids like you deserve a second chance, a third chance. Because I know you need it. And because I know if no one gives it to you, then it’s my job to try.”

 

Neil blinked at Wymack, suddenly at a loss for words. He didn’t trust him: men like Wymack made Neil feel too much like his father was looking over his shoulder, waiting for him to fail, waiting to punish him for daring to hope.

 

“And also because Kevin reminds me of the son of a close friend. She died a long time ago and her son went missing. I’m hoping my doing this would go towards helping other kids like that boy. Like you.” He looked straight into Kevin’s eyes and smiled kindly. “You may have heard about her, this friend of mine. Her name was Kayleigh Day.”

 

* * *

 

“Neil!”

 

Neil didn’t stop walking, instead taking the steps up to their apartment two at a time to put more distance between himself and Kevin. When he arrived at their door, he let himself in and slammed the door in Kevin’s face. He stomped to the room they shared and hurled his school bag into a corner. The tantrum didn’t really soothe his temper but he was savagely pleased by the look of hurt in Kevin’s face as he quietly let himself into their room.

 

“Neil, please talk to me?” Kevin implored, sitting cross-legged on his bed, next to where Neil had hurled himself into the mound of pillows and burrowed his head in to avoid having to look at Kevin’s face or listen to his voice, but it was futile. The apartment was simply far too small for them to be able to avoid each other.

 

He bounced away from the pillows, glaring sourly at Kevin. “What’s the point when you’ve already decided for me what to do with my life?”

 

“I haven’t…” Kevin stopped and sighed, rubbing his forehead tiredly. “Look, I’m sorry, you’re right. I shouldn’t have committed to Wymack without discussing with you first. But don’t you see? This is our chance to continue playing… together.”

 

“Kevin, we never should have played. What we’re doing…” Neil gestured expansively. He wasn’t sure what he meant. Maybe everything: school, playing Exy, staying in Oakland… kissing each other… “This is dangerous. Mom would’ve had our asses just from carrying a racquet.”

 

“But she’s not here anymore,” Kevin countered quietly. He reached out an imploring hand that Neil stared at for a long moment before hesitantly taking it. “I know it’s dangerous and I know we agreed to run, but don’t you think it’s truly time we stopped and faced our fate? It could be ugly and dangerous but that doesn’t mean we can’t handle it together. Wymack can help us. I know it.”

 

Neil stared at Kevin’s hand in his own. What he wanted was a dream but Neil wasn’t sure people like him were allowed to dream. He didn’t think he was capable of seeing these dreams through. But he’d never been able to deny Kevin what he wanted, even at the risk of his own life.

 

“He recognized you, you know,” Neil said softly. “Even without that number on your face. He knew who you were. So do you really think we’ll be safe with his team? What if he’s just waiting to turn you over to the Moriyamas?”

 

Kevin shook his head. “Wymack wouldn’t do that.”

 

“You don’t know that.”

 

“Yes, I do,” Kevin insisted. He placed careful fingers on Neil’s chin, tilting his face up so he would look Kevin in the eye. “Coach Wymack is my father.”

 

For the second time that evening, Neil gaped at Kevin. “He’s your father… and you never thought to tell me?”

 

Kevin sighed. “There wasn’t a need to, Neil. Your mother never wanted us to talk about our lives before, and up until a few years ago, I didn’t even know what kind of person he was. I grew up thinking whoever had knocked my mother up had simply abandoned us to our fates that mom had to leave me with the Master just to have someone care for me when she died.” He shook his head. “I was so angry with him when I finally found out who my father was. What kind of man just up and leaves his pregnant girlfriend?  


“But then before your mother came for me, I found this letter she’d written the Master. Coach Wymack has no idea he even had a child because mom never told him I was his. And then, he started the PSU Exy program… Neil, I’ve seen how he took care of the Foxes. They’re this bunch of troubled rejects with nowhere else to go.” Kevin’s eyes were so earnest Neil thought he was going to cry. “Just like us. That’s how I knew. I knew if he tried to come for me that we’d be safe.”

 

“As safe as people like us could be anywhere else,” Neil said wryly. He wasn’t sure yet if he was jealous that Kevin suddenly had someone that wasn’t Neil that he could turn to to protect him from his past, but he didn’t want to begrudge Kevin his happiness. It was such an elusive concept, happiness was. Maybe he was envious that Kevin could have something that Neil could only pine after now that his mother was gone, but Neil had placed Kevin’s happiness above his own, and maybe for now, that was enough.

 

“So,” Kevin said, cupping Neil’s face tenderly with one hand, “are we okay?”

 

“Yeah,” Neil said softly. “We’re okay.”

 

“Good,” Kevin whispered, and closed the few inches between their faces with a searing kiss.

 

Neil sighed and opened his mouth to Kevin enthusiastically. This, he knew, was something he would never tire of. Kevin’s mouth felt like fire and sex and devoured him with a fervor that Neil thought he wouldn’t have been capable of topping since the first time Kevin had kissed him. Kevin always kissed like he played Exy: savage and beautiful and holding nothing back, and Neil was just so far gone he didn’t know how else to respond but to give everything he had to Kevin as he bore Neil down on the bed, stretching out on top of him, the same strong and protective boy that Neil had first given himself to that night when Kevin found him in the deserted hallways of the Bloomfield campus.

 

He moaned into the kiss as Kevin’s hands wandered under the hem of his shirt, smoothed over his rapidly heating skin like dousing gasoline to an open flame. Like always, when Kevin touched him, he was on fire in an instant and he only wanted to let himself be consumed.

 

Neil laid a flat palm against Kevin’s chest, marveling at the jump and ripple of muscle under Kevin’s sweatshirt as his breath stuttered into Neil’s mouth, before pulling back to rip the shirt off and setting Neil’s hand against his heart as he applied his lips on the loudly thudding pulse in Neil’s neck and sucking tenderly.

 

Neil’s breath hitched at the sensation and he gasped as Kevin pulled away to tug his shirt off, and then it was skin on bare skin and Neil’s mind went numb and hormones took over. He surged up, propping himself on his elbows to lick and kiss up Kevin’s neck, delighting in Kevin’s quiet sighs of pleasure as he made short work of his and Neil’s pants, and then they were completely naked and everything felt so much better as Kevin’s hot palms ran reverently over Neil’s thighs, across his stomach and chest, his eyes wide with quiet amazement even as Neil mewled and sighed at the touch.

 

“You’re so beautiful,” Kevin whispered, dipping low to kiss the worst of the scarring on Neil’s body, the round, ragged bullet scar near his collarbone, the triangular burn from where Nathan had shoved a hot iron on Neil’s shoulder when he was seven, the long jagged knife slash on his stomach, the collection of little nicks from when he learned how to spar with a knife against Lola…

 

Neil preened and then moaned low and deep from his throat as Kevin’s mouth finally found where his body ached desperately to be touched. He couldn’t stop the hitching noises he made as Kevin wrapped his lips around the head of his cock, sucking lightly before diving deep to shove Neil as far down his throat as he could go without choking. His body was on fire and Kevin’s mouth was the only relief. Kevin licked and sucked and kissed up Neil’s shaft. He was so close, so very close…

 

And then Kevin was pulling back, licking his swollen lips as he surged up to swallow the frustrated groan that escaped Neil’s mouth.

 

“Neil,” he whispered and it sounded like a prayer. “I want to fuck you. Will you let me?”

 

“Yes, Kevin yes, yes.” Neil was babbling, desperate to have the heat of Kevin’s mouth or his dextrous hands over his body again just to relieve the fire raging in his veins, but Kevin was pulling away even more to lean over the side of the bed to rummage in his discarded bag on the floor. Neil cried out in frustration, bucking his hips up to Kevin’s body, seeking friction.

 

“Sshh,” Kevin murmured soothingly as he brought a small tube of what appeared to be oil or lube and spread it across the fingers of one hand, the other moving to hitch Neil’s legs up his arm and pushing his knees to his chest. “You have to be patient. I don’t want to hurt you.”

 

Neil made incoherent impatient noises that died in his throat at the feel of Kevin’s slicked up fingers against his opening. They’d done this a few times already since the night they spent at Joey’s mcmansion, and Neil already knew what to expect. He tried to relax his seizing muscles as Kevin eased one finger into him, stroking and caressing his insides as he murmured quiet praise and encouragement into Neil’s ear.

 

One finger became two, and then three as Kevin fucked him slowly with his fingers, stretching and questing, brushing against his prostate every few strokes, enough to make him a writing, sobbing mess on the bed, but not enough to make him come. When finally, he was satisfied with the exquisite torture, Kevin withdrew his fingers and Neil wanted to scream with frustration. But Kevin kissed him deeply even has he slicked himself up and lined himself against Neil.

 

“Relax,” he whispered, kissing Neil again as he slowly pushed in.

 

Neil cried out. It felt a little like Kevin was splitting him open slowly, the stretch from his fingers a paltry comparison to the burning feel of Kevin’s cock driving slowly into him, inch by agonizing inch until he was fully sheathed.

 

“Breathe, Neil,” Kevin said, kissing the pinpricks of tears that pushed out of the corner of Neil’s eyes.

 

“Fuck, it hurts,” he gritted out, clutching tightly against Kevin’s biceps.

 

Kevin looked at him seriously and Neil could see the strain of holding back from bucking into his body evident in the furrow between his brows. “Do you want to stop?”

 

“N-no. Just… just give me a minute.”

 

“Of course,” Kevin whispered, kissing him tenderly, light fingers stroking his flagging erection to distract Neil from the stretch.

 

When Neil no longer felt like he was being ripped at the seams, he squeezed Kevin’s arm and nodded. “You can move now.”

 

Kevin did. Neil cried out again at the first tentative thrust of hips but it devolved quickly into a low groan as Kevin shifted and found what he was looking for. It was messy and tentative at first, but Kevin moved slowly enough and watched him long enough to realize what Neil liked and when he did, he snapped his hips forward, with a firm tug on Neil’s cock. Neil gasped and moaned prettily at each sharp pump of Kevin’s hips and dimly, he wanted to laugh at the realization that yes, Kevin also fucked exactly like he played Exy: brutal, unforgiving, and with the most frighteningly accurate aim. He thrashed in Kevin’s arms, a slave to the exploding sensations Kevin’s kisses, his hand on his cock, the slick slide of his dick in Neil’s ass, evoked in him. He’d never felt so full. He’d never been so adored.

 

Neil’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused and hazy at Kevin’s unerring thrusts into his prostate. He hadn’t even realized he’d closed them against the onslaught of sensation. They were closer than Neil had ever been with anyone in his whole life and he wanted Kevin to know. He wanted…

 

“Kevin,” he panted, voice ragged, as he thrust back against Kevin’s hips, eliciting a low moan that shook Neil to the core. “I love you.”

 

Kevin’s eyes widened into a surprised stare as his hips stilled and warmth suddenly filled Neil as Kevin’s pleasure poured out of him with a choked curse. “Fuck, Neil!”

 

Neil clenched as Kevin’s cock throbbed and emptied into him. Kevin’s face was red with embarrassment of his premature release as he applied his hand frantically on Neil’s cock, fisting him viciously until the pleasure finally crested and broke as Neil came all over his hand with a quiet whimper. Kevin stroked him carefully through his release until Neil was shoving his hand away from overstimulation.

 

“Sorry,” he whispered, kissing the grimace of discomfort off Neil’s face as he eased out of his ass. Neil made a face as he felt come trickling down the back of his thighs and into the sheets.

 

“Shove over, your come is getting my bed wet,” he complained. He could feel his cheeks starting to heat up at his confession in the heat of passion. He hadn’t meant to be so… forward or desperate, not when Kevin evidently wasn’t ready for what Neil felt, so he covered up his embarrassment with light banter.

 

Kevin wiped his hand messily on Neil’s sheets and scooted back on his bed, dragging Neil with him, and leaving a trailing smear of come across the scratchy fabric of their cheap sheets. “That shit is nasty, and it’s trickling out of _your_ ass, so I really don’t see how that’s my fault."

 

Neil yawned as Kevin got up languidly to kill the lights before collapsing back at his side, curling his larger body protectively over Neil’s.

 

“I don’t care, that’s your come, so you clean it up.”

 

“Tomorrow,” Kevin murmured sleepily against the back of his head and Neil relaxed. In the darkness, it was hard to regret his words because they were a sliver of truth coming from the fractured facade of a liar.

 

Neil shifted closer, tucking his legs against Kevin’s knees, and pulling his hand to his lips. “Kevin?”

 

“Mm?”

 

“I mean what I said,” he whispered, laying one last kiss on Kevin’s open palm.

 

“Go to sleep, Neil.”

 

So he did. He was at the threshold of sleep and wakefulness so he couldn’t be sure if it had been a dream when he felt Kevin’s lips ghost over the back of his neck and words murmured so quietly, he felt and not heard him speak.

 

When he woke in the middle of the night, he couldn’t keep the quiet, gratified smile off his face as he slipped back off into sleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I swear this is the last of the awkward porn scenes I'm subjecting people to. The next two chapters are the last and brings this story to a close, because I want to focus on fleshing out Andrew's character next. I will try to post them before the weekend ends :)
> 
> (PS. Has anyone noticed that these two never clean up after sex? Personal hygiene, what happens to you when teenage boys don't have moms to nag them?)
> 
> (PPS. Kevin Day comes from his boyfriend telling him he loves him. This needs to be canon omfg)


	15. Chapter 15

Neil awoke to the frantic sound of knocking on the door to their apartment, and the heavy dead weight of Kevin’s naked thigh pressed on his stomach, pinning him to the lumpy mattress of his bed. For a horribly disorienting moment, he panicked at what his mother would think if she saw him and Kevin pressed indecently next to each other, naked and defenseless, before he remembered where he was, that his mother was dead, that he and Kevin had fought over Kevin’s willingness to sign away their futures to a man Kevin only knew as his father from a forgotten letter his mother had left to Tetsuji Moriyama. He remembered how the fight had devolved into the most passionate night he had ever spent in Kevin’s arms.

 

He flushed as he pushed Kevin’s leg off of him, and swung himself off their joined beds, his own legs unsteady and shaky as he bent to pick out random pieces of clothing from the pile of discarded fabric on the floor, lips quirking with amusement as Kevin’s sweatshirt fell to his knees like a nightgown. He yawned as he opened the door a crack.

 

Their next door neighbor, the Mexican woman with the two kids, was talking too rapidly in Spanish for his still sleep-fogged brain to catch up, but he spied Coach Wymack hovering in the corridor with a woman he had never seen before.

 

Neil scowled and opened the door a little wider. “Why are you here? How did you find out where we live?”

 

Wymack didn’t beat around the bush. “Kevin and I had an agreement and I’m here to confirm I’ve done my end of the deal.”

 

Neil wondered how desperate this man must really be to get Kevin on his team. But then, he shouldn’t really have been surprised. Kevin was just that good. He eyed Wymack and the woman warily. “Who’s she?”

 

The woman extended a hand. Neil stared it down rudely, just as he had with Wymack. “I’m Danielle Wilds. I’ll be Kevin’s captain when he joins us in the summer.”

 

Still scowling, he opened the door wider to finally let them in. Wymack’s and Wilds’ faces remained impassive at the shabby sight of the apartment: the muddy threadbare carpeting that Kevin had tried in vain to scrub clean when they first moved in, the moth-eaten lumpy couch covered in a discarded blanket to make it look like someone hadn’t died on the cushions, the rickety table with mismatched plastic chairs. He knew even with their blank faces, they were already drawing conclusions on what kind of lives the Josten brothers lived, but Neil didn’t care.

 

“Wait here.” He gestured at the tiny living area. Wymack and Wilds chose not to sit, preferring to stand next to the bare walls. “Kevin’s still asleep and it’ll take awhile to get him up.”

 

Wilds shot Wymack a meaningful look as she watched Neil let himself back into the bedroom. Kevin was still snoring loudly into the stained sheets. Neil kicked at one of his legs that had fallen over the edge of the bed. 

 

“Hey, wake up.” Kevin stirred but didn’t wake, mumbling incoherently as he shifted and presented Neil with his naked ass. Neil slapped it. “Your dad’s here to see your naked ass. Wake the fuck up.”

 

Kevin shot out of the bed, blinking stupidly at Neil until he realized that they were alone in the room and whoever was there to see him was probably outside.

 

“What?” Kevin mumbled, rubbing his face sleepily and yawning so hugely, his jaw cracked. “What does he want?”

 

Neil shrugged. “Probably the contracts? I don’t know. Get dressed and talk to them. I want them out of here. They were looking at me funny.”

 

“Wh--oh!” Kevin smiled ruefully as he reached up at Neil’s neck and pressed a finger to the angry red bruise he’d left the night before. It stood out on Neil’s pale, slender neck, brighter than a flashing neon sign. “You should probably cover that up. And maybe not come out in the hallway wearing my clothes?”

 

They swapped out each other’s clothes and Kevin helped Neil cover up his hickey before he did his tattoo. When they came back out into the living room, both of them were mostly presentable if not for the identical messy hair. Wilds looked from Kevin to Neil and burst out laughing.

 

“Neat trick,” she said, tapping her own neck to let the two of them know that she hadn’t missed the mark Kevin had painstakingly tried to cover up. Sure enough, there was a smooth gap of skin where Neil’s freckles ended and the makeup began. “Might want to cover up his whole neck next time so girls don’t notice.”

 

Neil frowned at Kevin accusingly but said nothing. Kevin simply chose to ignore Wilds and addressed Wymack directly.

 

“I told you we’d sign after you’ve found something for my brother.”

 

“And I have,” Wymack answered smoothly, presenting another sheaf of papers that Kevin took and glanced over suspiciously. “There are no high schools near enough to Palmetto State for him to go to, but the school offers home-based internet courses for undergraduates before he can take his GED. The team is small enough that he can stay in your dorm room with enough room for everyone else. And if all our other recruits pan out and he needs to move, Abby, our team nurse, or I can put him up until he graduates. We don’t live in campus but close enough for the two of you to be able to see each other everyday.”

 

“‘ _ See’ _ ,” Wilds said pointedly. “Are you two even real brothers? You don’t even look alike.”

 

“He’s adopted,” the two of them said at the same time. Neil smiled smugly as Kevin scowled down at him.

 

“Right,” Wymack replied, looking at them strangely. “As long as this isn’t going to be a problem. I assume you’re your brother’s legal guardian?”

 

Kevin nodded. He shuffled through the first set of papers Wymack had given him the night before. Neil saw that Kevin had already signed for them both. Wymack took the papers, checking them over before he nodded to Wilds.

 

“Good. The summer pre-season starts in June, but if you want to leave California before that, I can arrange for both of you to come down to SC as soon as your classes end. Fax over his records when you’ve got that filled.”

 

The two of them made for the door and Neil would have slammed it in their faces if Wilds hadn’t paused at the threshold to give the two of them a shrewd parting stare.

 

“You’ll be glad to hear that South Carolina’s age of consent is fourteen, so at least you two won’t be doing anything illegal down there.”

 

Kevin gaped at her as Wymack ushered her out. Neil shut the door behind them with a scowl before turning to Kevin, glaring pointedly as if to say “ _ this is your mess.” _

 

Kevin sighed and pulled him close. “Man, we’re so fucked.”

 

* * *

 

Wymack came through on his promise in getting Neil a school a week after they faxed the application papers back, with details on the home school course and a confirmation to Kevin that they could stay together at the dorms as long as Neil played nice with the other players on the team. Neil complained about people misjudging him as the difficult child when Kevin was the one who created the whole problem for the two of them.

 

Christmas break passed without further fanfare and the two of them went back to school to prepare with their team for the last games of the fall season before state playoffs and championship in the spring. 

 

Neil continued to struggle with his classes until Coach told him to shape up or get cut from the team to dedicate time to remedial. His grades improved, but only marginally, enough to keep people from questioning and for him to keep playing. Kevin helped whenever he could, the two of them staying up late with Neil doing Kevin’s calculus homework and Kevin proofreading his English papers well into late nights after their community center practice.

 

The days were so quiet and mundane that Neil had almost forgotten all of their problems with Riko and with Andrew back in November. They’d won their games in January with no problem, and Kevin was shaping up to be in the running for most valuable player in the state playoffs, with statistics that blew every other striker in the California high school varsity league out of the water.

 

The quiet only lasted for a month. In February, Andrew Doe and Joey Kavinsky were arrested for drug possession. Joey’s parents paid off his bail and no charges were filed, but Doe’s arrest record in California was apparently long enough for the state to try him. The rest of the team speculated if he was going to be sent off to juvy or adult prison. Kevin only saw the damage Andrew’s absence would do to the team’s performance, but Neil remembered Andrew’s blank face when his fosters had shown up at the Southridge game, when he saw his fosters talking to his estranged twin.

 

But there wasn’t any time to worry about the gaps in their team as the last game of the season with the current state champions of Amador Valley High School approached. Kevin was relentless in training and Neil saw the strain even on their usually happy-go-lucky teammates. Coach Alejo waxed poetic about how finally, the team was going to have a shot at championships come spring, and the Dream Pack bragged at girls in the hallway lockers that they were going to kick so much ass in the playoffs.

 

Neil had only stopped by his locker the afternoon before the game to pick up a few books he needed for that weekend’s homework when he spied Andrew sitting on the bench outside the guidance counselor’s office. The tall, reedy blond woman that had been with him before when he took off for a month was in the counselor’s office with the man they had seen with Andrew’s birth mother at the Southridge game. Neil couldn’t hear clearly what they were talking about but the conversation in the room looked heated. Meanwhile, Andrew sat outside looking bored.

 

Neil closed his locker quietly and walked over. Andrew didn’t appear interested in his appearance or his sudden inclination to talk to him.

 

“What happened?” Neil asked quietly, sliding into the space next to Andrew.

 

The blond boy glanced at him sideways, still uninterested. “I’m not going to juvy.”

 

“Oh.” Andrew didn’t look particularly with this turn of events though. “Maybe the cops realized it was just a misunderstanding?”

 

The slanted eyes narrowed, flashing golden. “I don’t like that word.”

 

Neil frowned, confused. “What word? ‘Misunderstanding’?”

 

“People do not understand what it means,” Andrew said.

 

Neil started to say something, to ask if maybe Andrew was okay after the arrest--he’d spent a few nights in jail, after all--but Kevin had just then emerged from the faculty room adjacent to the guidance office and spotted Neil and Andrew sitting together. He pursed his lips and frowned coming to stand in front of them.

 

“Are you going to play tonight?”

 

Andrew stared up at Kevin, his hazel eyes unreadable. The air crackled with an unnamed tension that Neil was only just now beginning to understand. And then Andrew was turning away from Kevin, dismissing him completely as he turned his attention to Neil.

 

“I heard you weren’t real brothers.”

 

Neil’s eyes widened and he glanced up at Kevin who started to scoff and demand where Andrew had even heard of such a rumor but Neil knew it was too late. Andrew wouldn’t believe them even if they showed him their faked birth certificates, so he settled for the version of the truth he’d given to Wymack. “My mother adopted Kevin.”

 

Andrew’s eyes were vicious as they bore into him. “Is that why you let him touch you?”

 

“What--” Neil sputtered for a response. He’d always suspected Andrew had known something about him and Kevin from the night he was trapped in school but he’d never truly understood the calculating stares he’d gotten from the other boy. His face was heating up and his ears were burning.

 

In front of them, Kevin had clearly had enough and grabbed Neil roughly by the wrist and yanked him to his feet, and loomed threateningly over Andrew’s small, skinny frame.

 

“I don’t need or want your judgment, Doe. Stay away from my brother and get your ass into practice. We have a game tonight.”

 

Andrew surprised them both by laughing, but it wasn’t a laughter of amusement or mirth as the sound cut between Neil and Kevin like a rusted blade, drawing blood, infecting the wound with gangrene.

 

“Can’t. That woman who bore me wants to take me out to South Carolina. I’m leaving tonight.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Andrew's suspicions and attention finally explained: basically, he thought Kevin was abusing Neil the same way he was being abused by his foster brother and that Neil probably had Stockholm syndrome. This explains his comment about what Kevin was doing with a gun when he came to look for Neil.
> 
> How did he figure out all these things about the two of them? Andrew is smart, but also, he's a stalker. He stalked Neil relentlessly throughout the semester, figured out the brothers were screwing each other, and then came to the conclusion that Neil may be like him. Basically, Andrew's life is really screwed up and so he has a particularly screwed up view about people. In reality, he was just looking for a kindred spirit (which Neil, in all honesty, wasn't, because Neil was in love with Kevin).
> 
> Also, Dan and Wymack figuring things out: let's face it, Neil and Kevin weren't exactly subtle. They're horny teenagers in love.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Violence. Violence everywhere. Riko Moriyama is his own warning.

Everyone knew about Andrew’s sudden departure from Bloomfield by the time the Amador Valley Dons showed up an hour before starting serve. Reggie was nervous as he shook hands with Jeremy Knox, the opposing team’s captain, and introduced him to the newer members of the team.

 

Knox, Neil found, was the personification of the California summer dream, with his sandy blond hair bleached almost platinum (“It’s from surf camp last summer!”), tan, freckled skin, bright blue eyes, and sunshiney smile. Neil wasn’t interested in pleasantries but Kevin was enchanted as soon as Knox started talking about Exy and the teams Knox was considering after graduation. Neil tuned them out in favor of scanning the crowds of students, parents and teachers milling excitedly before the game for any sign of the Ravens.

 

By the time Jeremy left their bench to lead his team in warmups and drills, Kevin’s flushed, exhilarated face thoroughly annoyed Neil. Joey nudged him as they ran through their warm-up laps around the court.

 

“Told you Knox is a twink. Looks like Kevin has a thing for pretty boys, huh?”

 

Neil scowled and picked up his pace. He didn’t know how everyone else found out about him and Kevin, but he wasn’t going to dig his grave any further by acknowledging rumors. Already, everyone on the team was watching the two of them curiously, perhaps trying to catch the brothers in a not-so-brotherly moment. The only consolation out of the issue was that it didn’t look like the rumors had gotten out of the team yet. Helen had offered that it was “cool” if they were together as long as they weren’t really brothers (“Wow, that’d be really awkward and kinda squick, to be honest!”) and promised to keep a reign on Delilah’s gossiping, and it looked like Tom and the Dream Pack had no friends outside the team.

 

Neil didn’t care if people talked. He had bigger problems than stupid high school rumors, because Tom wasn’t sure he could hold down the goal against Knox's team without Andrew. Reggie had Delilah armor up for goal instead of starting defense, but even he wasn’t convinced they could keep Knox from scoring.

 

Kevin, surprisingly, didn’t care. He and Knox had hit it off so well he was already fanboying the other team’s striker by the time the buzzer signaled starting serve. Neil was beyond pissed to learn that Kevin had already disclosed he was signing with the PSU Foxes to Knox, but he could only fume quietly outside the court as the game got underway.

 

It wasn’t hard to see that Kevin was leagues better than even someone everyone worshipped like Knox, but both teams were evenly matched at the first fifteen minutes of the game, with the Dons keeping a good defense that kept Reggie out but not Kevin, and the Tigers’ backliners struggling to keep Knox away from Tom’s goal. They’d only succeeded in part because Blake and Ivan were smart enough to watch the team captain, who was the better striker, but that left Tom open to attack from the other striker, who was better still than what Bloomfield was used to fighting off.

 

Joey blew Neil a raspberry as they jogged to their places once they were swapped in. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep Knox on my side of the court so you can keep Kevin to yourself.”

 

Neil flipped him the bird and scowled at Kevin when Kevin had the audacity to ask what was going on.

 

The game resumed and Neil and Kevin routed the Dons’ defense. By halftime, the Tigers had taken the lead, five to three. Knox was running across the court excitedly to talk to Kevin and Neil.

 

“I have seriously never seen strikers work so seamlessly like that!” he exclaimed, pulling off his helmet and blinding anyone within a ten-foot radius with his wide, toothy, affable grin. “It’s like the two of you are in each other’s minds, the way you read your passes.”

 

Neil shrugged and headed for the benches in a slow jog. “We’re brothers. We’ve been playing with each other for years.” He glanced back at Kevin, who was deep in animated conversation with Knox. “Kevin, are you coming?”

 

“Ooh, trouble in Josten paradise,” Ron sniped, collapsing in giggles as Joey and Blake mimed smooching and pointing in Kevin and Knox’s direction.

 

Reggie held his hand up for order. “Guys, knock it off. Neil’s getting jealous.”

 

Neil weathered his teammates’ ribbing with stoic disinterest as he drank his water and kept his eyes on the stands. Like the Southridge game, recruiters from college Exy teams had flocked the Amador Valley game, probably to scout Knox and Kevin. Kevin’s signing with PSU was still a well-kept secret he extracted from Wymack, that even Coach Alejo had no idea, though he would probably hear soon once he learned from the registrar that Kevin was pulling Neil from Bloomfield to fly to Palmetto with him in May.

 

He opened his mouth to answer some inane question about Kevin from Delilah when he spotted something--no, some _one_ \--lurking in the tunnel that led out of the court and to the main school building.

 

“Coach, I need to be swapped out for second half.” He stood, removing his gloves and helmet, leaving them on the bench with his racquet.

 

“But we’re in the lead!” Coach sputtered, but Neil was already moving.

 

“Reggie can take them. He’s improved a lot!” Neil only hazarded a glance back. “Keep Kevin on the court. Don’t pull him out.”

 

He no longer heard Coach’s acknowledgement or Reggie’s startled thanks for Neil’s flippant vote of confidence as he sprinted towards the tunnel. Here, the crowds thinned out as the area didn’t give a good enough view of the court. Neil barely heard the sound of the second half buzzer over the pounding of blood in his ears. Whoever had been in the tunnel had retreated into the main building, so Neil burst through the doors, sprinting to find the lurker.

 

The lights to the hallways were out as everyone had already moved to the court for the game and it was a struggle to adjust to the sudden darkness after the brightness of the floodlights in the court. He thought he heard a noise from one of the classrooms, and he turned to investigate and was immediately met with a fist to his nose. Blows from fists and booted feet rained down on his head and midsection until he stumbled and fell, vision blacking out for a few seconds from the pain blooming in his face as a nasal voice spoke in sharp Japanese from somewhere above him.

 

Strong hands wrenched his arms from where he’d folded them over his head to protect himself from getting a concussion, yanking his wrists to his back in an unyielding grip. He was hauled up to his feet as another hand yanked his head back by his hair, the angle uncomfortable and harsh.

 

Neil blinked away tears of pain as his eyes focused on the youthful features of a smiling Riko Moriyama, the 1 tattooed on a delicate cheekbone a harsh contrast on his pale skin.

 

“Neil Josten, hello.” He spoke mildly even has he drew a bushcraft hunting knife up Neil’s face. “When someone told me that a boy who looked like Kevin Day was spotted in this school with some nobody, I didn’t think I could believe him. After all, Kevin Day had been kidnapped from Castle Evermore five years ago by people more important than some pedestrian-looking school boy. Imagine my surprise when I learned you were brothers! Has Kevin finally been adopted by a boring white collar accountant and made to live with his basic white bread family?”

 

Neil gurgled a curse but with his heart thudding in his throat at the press of the knife to the tender skin of his neck, he realized struggling was futile. Whoever held him was much stronger than him, and Riko looked dangerously adept at wielding the knife on his skin.

 

“What a lucky break this has been, don’t you think, Jean?” Riko said conversationally. “I came here to recruit Jeremy Knox and Kevin Josten, and instead I find Kevin Day and some no-name boy masquerading as his brother.”

 

Neil struggled again, inhaling sharply at the press of Riko’s knife at his throat, drawing blood, but Jean Moreau was over a foot taller than him and at least fifty pounds heavier. His grip was unrelenting and he held Neil up like he was a rag doll.

 

“Riko,” Jean said quietly, accented voice hoarse with warning. “No blood. We promised the Master we would leave no evidence.”

 

Riko looked delighted, like a deranged child being handed a new toy. “You’re right, of course, Jean. Cuff and gag him, we have thirty minutes of second half left. Then we can ask Kevin how much he values his ‘brother’s life.”

 

“No--!” Neil started to protest but Riko dragged the knife delicately over his skin, slicking his neck with more blood. Jean stuffed a wad of cloth that might have been his handkerchief into his mouth then tied him to one of the classroom desks with plastic zipties. Riko pointed the knife in his face.

 

“Do us a favor, Josten, and shut your mouth until Kevin gets here, or I’ll slit your throat and then no one would be happy with the mess we leave,” Riko said quietly, murder on his face, before he melted into the shadows of the empty classroom.

 

Jean put a finger to his lips, his grey eyes somber as he shook his head and followed Riko. Neil struggled against his bonds, but Jean had cuffed both his hands and legs to the chair. He tried to scream but the action only shoved the fabric gag deeper down his throat, threatening to choke him until he lapsed into hateful, defeated silence, and the only sounds he could hear was the ragged heave of his breath and the distant sound of cheer, a buzzer going off as Kevin Day wove his true magic on the court.

 

* * *

 

The thirty minutes of silence felt like a slow trickle of dread. Neil’s bruises on his face and stomach were starting to throb painfully. One of his eyes had almost swollen shut from the force of Jean’s punches and the pulsing thud in the back of his head that made his vision swim told him he might have a concussion. One of his arms had dislocated in his struggle and he was sure the sharp pain in his midsection meant at least one rib broken.

 

He cursed himself internally. If he hadn’t been in such a hurry to investigate Riko, he would’ve thought through that it was better to just take Kevin and run. Now, because of him, Kevin would so easily be baited to come to his rescue, leading him directly into Riko’s clutches.

 

His vision was dimming by the time the final buzzer rang. From the raucous cheers drifting from the court, Neil guessed the Tigers had won. He almost smiled in spite of himself. Kevin had done it: he’d won the team a real shot at championship, and all by himself, without Neil to synchronize his gameplay, or Andrew to guard his back. He’d won on sheer talent and skill alone. If either of them somehow survived this encounter with Riko, Kevin would be so insufferable.

 

The minutes dragged by as the cheering died down replaced by scattered sounds of celebration and still no Kevin. Neil hoped he’d stay on the court longer, let himself get spirited away by Jeremy Knox, or join the rest of the team in their typical post-game drinking parties at Joey’s mansion. Anything except to bring him into that classroom to look for Neil.

 

Riko was getting impatient and had moved in front of Neil to carve a lazy tic-tac-toe on the wood of the desk where Neil was cuffed. Neil wished his hands were free and he could show Riko exactly how a Wesninski played tic-tac-toe with a knife, when the sound of the main doors in the hallway bursting open had him shooting out of his chair, an excited glint of a smile touching his delicate Asian features as he moved to stand behind Neil, positioning his knife over Neil’s throat.

 

“Neil? Hey, are you here?” Kevin called as Neil heard the clatter of his court shoes on the hallway linoleum. “Coach said you disappeared at halftime but we won and--”

 

“Neil’s in here, Kevin,” Riko crooned, snagging the back of Neil’s head by his hair and yanking backwards, just as Kevin burst into the classroom with wide, disbelieving eyes.

 

“Neil!” he gasped as he ran forward to where Neil was seated, struggling at his bonds, and prying the gag out of Neil’s mouth as soon as he reached him, before Kevin’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and he recognized Riko’s smiling face shrouded in shadow. “Riko!”

 

“Scream for help and I’ll slit his throat, Kevin,” Riko said casually, pressing the knife deeper against Neil’s skin and slicing another shallow cut, blood pearling on the cut before dripping slowly down the knife’s edge.

 

Neil could feel hot blood trickling down his neck and he gritted his teeth. “Walk away, Kevin. Please.”

 

“You do that Kevin, and this school is going to spend the rest of the year looking for this boy’s body parts all over campus.” Riko punctuated his threat with another press of his knife. “Now, I think we should all be done with this charade. If you would just go with Jean over there--you remember Jean, don’t you, Kevin? He’s been missing your presence since you disappeared, especially since he’s been on the other end of the Master’s cane more often since you were gone--we can all forget that the last five years even happened.”

 

Neil’s eyes darted to Kevin’s face. “No, Kevin. You promised!” He hissed as Riko cut him again, yanking his head back harder. Neil released a hoarse shout at the pain in his scalp, the stinging cuts in his neck, the sharp ache in his throat. “I don’t care if I die, Kevin, please, just walk away.”

 

Riko grinned delightedly. “Oh, this is so very sweet, Kevin. How did you get this boy to be so self-sacrificing for you? I would have thought the real child would hate the adopted one.” He smiled at Jean. “You and Jean know all about that, don’t you?”

 

“Shut the fuck up,” Kevin growled as Jean melted out of the shadows, extending one hand.

 

“He’s going to kill him if you don’t come with us,” was all Jean said.

 

“I don’t care!” Neil yelled, voice hoarse from the angle his neck was stretched. “Kevin, please…!”

 

Riko backhanded him. Neil recoiled in pain as the knife dug ever deeper into his skin. Kevin watched in horror, unable to tear his eyes from the blooming red, black and blue on Neil’s face, or the steady stream of blood slowly dripping out of the cuts on his neck.

 

Kevin swallowed. “If I go with you… you promise to let him go?”

 

Riko shrugged. “Of course. I have no use for him and I don’t really care to do clean-up. As long as he keeps his mouth shut.”

 

“Kevin, no--”

 

But Kevin wasn’t looking at Neil anymore. His eyes were hollow and fixed on Riko’s handsome, cruel face. “He won’t alert the authorities. Just let him go.”

 

Riko grinned. “That’s settled then. Jean?”

 

Jean moved to take Kevin’s racquet from his nerveless fingers and gripped Kevin’s arm, tugging him out of the room. Kevin glanced back at Neil desperately.

 

“Neil, I--”

 

“No!” he sobbed, but Riko backhanded him again, causing his vision to dim and blur with tears.

 

Riko held the knife to his face, slicing his right cheek open once, twice, before stabbing the knife into the wood of the desk. “If I ever see your face near him again, you won’t live to regret it. You’re marked and I won’t forget you, Josten.”

 

With that parting shot, Riko disappeared into the silent, empty hallway, leaving Neil to the sound of his own desolate sobs. Now he was truly alone. Kevin was gone.

 

_Kevin was gone._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is it, the end of my story! Thank you so very much for keeping with me with this fic! I love Kevin/Neil and this is not the last story I will write because let's face it: kevineil is life.
> 
> A few notes about the things that happened in this chapter:
> 
> On the team finding out the Josten brothers weren't very brotherly in their affections: again, same as with Dan and Wymack, Neil and Kevin weren't exactly subtle, people were gossips in high school, and someone most likely just overheard the conversation with Andrew in the hallway, and told the rest of the team. Tell me this never happened to you in high school. All the shit I learned about my classmates were always overheard conversation getting passed around, so.
> 
> On Jeremy Knox --omfg, I love this boy. His existence in AFTG gives me life. Shades of Jeremy/Kevin, ugh. I love it. Sry if that's not your thing, but I ship Kevin with everything and everyone. Haha. Also Neil getting jealous over Jeremy: the cutest thing ever. :D
> 
> On Kevin going with Riko: he was going to kill Neil, and while Kevin wasn't as vocal as Neil, he loved him too. He wasn't going to let him die. Both of them are stupid martyrs for each other, so in the end, nobody is happy. Okay, maybe except Riko.
> 
> There will be a short epilogue that comes after, but this is the end of Hummingbird Heartbeats. It remains to be seen whether I can drag myself through a sequel (I've started one, but I don't know where it's going, so it's not going to be up anytime soon, sadly.) 
> 
> Thank you so much, again, for reading my story. If you want to talk Kevin/Neil, hit me up on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/mumuinc%22) anytime! I don't post a lot, just on the occasion when I have some fic to write home about, and it's almost always Kevin/Neil.
> 
> (PS. Neil is like... Rurouni Kenshin with the scars. This was not intentional.:o )


	17. Epilogue

The San Francisco bus terminal was unusually crowded for early Saturday morning as holiday seekers sought an early ride into Las Vegas or up mountain resorts in Oregon for the spring vacation.

 

Neil Josten stood in line to the ticket counters, waiting to purchase the ticket that would take him out of California. He hunched his shoulders, tugging at the strap of his duffel bag closer to his body, and pulling the hood of his sweatshirt over his face lower to hide the twin angry red lines snaking down his face. There wasn’t much he could do to hide his bruises on his pale skin, and applying any sort of cover-up would have just infected the wounds.

 

He moved gingerly, his left arm hanging useless in a makeshift sling as he slid bills over to pay for the ride that would take him out of the nightmarish bustle of the city and into quieter parts. The clerk who issued his ticket wouldn’t stop staring at his battered face as she handed him his ticket and change.

 

“Honey, what happened to you?”

 

He wanted to tune out her awful valley girl drawl, but the question had drawn the attention of clerks on adjacent counters and they all clucked sympathetically at him.

 

“Schoolyard fight,” he muttered quietly before pocketing his money and walking away. He didn’t want to hear them speculate over what kids were coming to these days, so he wandered over to a newspaper stand to find something to hide behind while he waited for the bus.

 

He’d already mapped out a journey that would take him to an inconspicuous dot of a forgotten town in bumfuck Arizona, where he could lick his wounds in the solitude of his despair without the raucous sounds of the city intruding obnoxiously into his misery in the form of a concerned woman who couldn’t speak a lick of English as she jabbered in Spanish and brought him soup and fruit when he arrived at his apartment the week before, bruised and bleeding, death in his tear-stained face. It wasn’t that he wasn’t grateful for his neighbor’s kindness. It was just that any attention to his battered appearance made his skin itch.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he spied a day-old tabloid that broke weird news about two-headed women in Albuquerque. In the lower left corner of the tabloid was a news piece about a boy kidnapped six years ago in his guardian’s home in West Virginia, returned triumphant and unharmed.

 

Neil fished for a few coins from his pocket and paid for the tabloid before flipping to the page of the news article. The story about the boy’s kidnapping and return read like a footnote in a much larger sports piece extolling the stellar collegiate season in the NCAA of the Edgar Allan Ravens and how the triumphant return of Kevin Day, who had been missing for over five years following a home invasion in the house of his guardian, Tetsuji Moriyama, and how Tetsuji and Kevin’s adopted brother, Riko, had not stopped looking for him and hoping for his return. It talked about Riko and Kevin’s excitement to join the Ravens’ ranks in the coming fall season, and their aspirations to make the US Court as the rightful heirs, as the kings of Exy. They were, after all, related to the founders of the sport.

 

Neil brushed his thumb over the inset picture of Kevin Day, his smile wide and carefree, his green eyes bright, in what was obviously a candid shot of him and Riko talking for the interview. Less than three months ago, those same green eyes had been turned to Neil, full of the same carefree boyish delight as Kevin kissed him enthusiastically, holding a sprig of mistletoe over their heads on Christmas eve. Two months ago, the soft curve of that smile had been what Neil had woken to when Kevin had whispered, “Happy birthday” to him under a mound of cheap Walmart bedsheets. A week ago, that face had been so full of despair and terror as he looked at Neil’s bloody and bruised face and decided to leave him to his fate.

 

Neil closed his eyes, starting, when he felt moisture trickle down his injured cheek, making the healing cuts sting. He hadn’t realized he had any tears left. He willed his composure to settle for a moment, before opening his eyes again to turn the page and read about a farmer whose pygmy goat had given birth to a unicorn.

 

Later, when he arrived at Millport, Arizona, he would take out the binder that contained everything his mother had left him--close to a quarter of a million dollars in cash, another three fourths of a million in bonds, and a coded page of numbers for his mother’s underworld contacts--pressed between clippings about the children of Exy, Riko Moriyama and Kevin Day, as they’d grown up the darlings of the sports press. Later, he would cut up that article and add it to the curious collection of stories Neil had kept about Kevin over the years. Later, he would wonder if Kevin was ever truly happy living on the fringes of existence in the six years he’d spent with Neil. Later, he would…

 

Neil pressed an angry finger at the corner of his eye when another fat tear threatened to push through. No, there was no point in wondering. Kevin had made his choice. Neil just had to accept it.

 

Later, maybe. When the pain was no longer so fresh.

 

He sighed and shouldered his duffel firmly. His bus was finally boarding. With a final glance at the terminal, Neil silently bid California goodbye.

 


End file.
